Word: hwang
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STEM CELLS Before admitting to ethical lapses last week, the same Korean researcher who created Snuppy the cloned puppy (see "Cloning") shocked Western scientists by producing 11 custom-made human-stem-cell lines from the cloned skin cells of individual patients. The labs' procedure was surprisingly efficient; Woo Suk Hwang and his team needed on average only 17 human eggs to grow each of the cell lines (in contrast to the 242 eggs they needed to make a single stem-cell line just 15 months earlier). Research like this may someday lead to treatments for a wide range of disorders...
CLONING Scientists had cloned sheep, pigs, cattle, mice, rabbits, horses and cats but, until this year, never a dog. Man's best friend, it turns out, is extremely difficult to duplicate. It was Woo Suk Hwang and his team at Seoul National University who finally succeeded in turning a single cell from the ear of an Afghan hound into a genetically identical puppy. Hwang was back in the news last week when he admitted lying about the source of some of the human eggs used in an earlier stem-cell experiment. Nevertheless, many scientists suspect the techniques Hwang perfected...
...Hwang Woo Suk, South Korea's pioneering stem-cell researcher, success comes from a willingness to work harder than anyone else. But his researchers may have taken their dedication a step too far. Last Thursday, after repeated denials, Hwang admitted that two of his junior lab workers had donated their eggs?a critical component for embryonic-stem-cell studies?for his research, and that an associate had paid other women for their eggs in 2002 and 2003. "Being too focused on scientific development, I may not have seen all the ethical issues related to my research," a grim Hwang said...
...Hwang said the egg donations by his subordinates?unethical due to the possibility of coercion?were done without his knowledge, and that the donors begged him to deny a May 2004 report on their actions in the journal Nature. But the cover-up began to come undone on Nov. 12, when Hwang's main international collaborator abruptly ended their partnership, citing ethical concerns. On Nov. 21, Hwang's associate Roh Sung Il admitted that he had paid about 20 women $1,500 each for their eggs, a practice since declared illegal. "I had to keep it secret," Roh told Time...
...Hwang's rush to push ahead with his work, a conflict was perhaps inevitable. "The whole issue of using human eggs and reproductive cloning is so sensitive that you have to be squeaky clean ethically," says Dr. Richard Boyd, a stem-cell scientist at Australia's Monash University. Despite the scandal, Hwang, who says he'll continue his research, remains a hero at home?last week more than 600 Korean women signed up to donate their eggs. That reaction worries Ku In Hoe, a bioethicist at Catholic University in Seoul. "Korea's representative scientist just turned...