Alan Trounson, a pioneering Australian embryologist, is conducting what may be the world’s most ambitious experiment in public funding for science: California’s voter-approved $3 billion speculative venture in human stem-cell research.

Aiming to shape the future of medicine, Dr. Trounson and his colleagues at the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine here struggle daily with the ethical and political challenge of funding human-embryo research the federal government has largely shunned.

California is the first state in the U.S. to use public bonds to fund such critical experiments. Whether or not researchers can deliver hoped-for treatments of several chronic diseases, they have already transformed how controversial biomedical research is sustained.

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