A Cloud of Stem CellThe pressure on stem cell pioneer Woo Suk Hwang over the way he obtain
A Cloud of Stem Cell
The pressure on stem cell pioneer Woo Suk Hwang over the way he obtained human eggs for his research is intensifying-particularly in South Korea, where he had been a national hero. In the past week, several new claims have emerged that Hwang may have used eggs that were paid for, as well as eggs from junior members of his laboratory.
Hwang's team, based at South National University, has produced a string of landmark papers in stem cell research, including the first stem cells obtained from a cloned human embryo(胚胎)(W. S. Hwang et al. Science 303, 1669-1674; 2004) and the first patient-matched embryonic stem cells(W. S. Hwang et al. Science 308, 1777-1783; 2005).
For South Korean scientist, cloning pioneer and Snuppy creator, Woo Suk Hwang, things keep going from bad to worse. Last month, he had to admit that as part of the groundbreaking stem cell research he published in 2004, one of his colleagues had paid some women for their egg donations, and that two of the unpaid donors were Hwang's own junior researchers. Amid the moral controversy that followed, Hwang was in hospital for extreme fatigue and exhaustion. He was released earlier this week, only to find one of his former researchers on a national news broadcast claiming that the history-making stem cell lines Hwang created were fake.
The news broadcast was part of a multi-part investigative series by Korea's MBC-TV. Also in the broadcast, the researcher said that Hwang had told him to make up data in order to make it appear as if the South Koreans had created more stem cells, made from patients with diseases, than they actually had. "This is something I shouldn't have done," said the researcher, whose face was not shown on camera and was only identified by his last name, Kim. "I had no choice but to do it."
In a separate interview, Roh Sung Li, the doctor who had provided donated eggs to Hwang's research, said that Hwang had asked Science, the journal that published his paper on patient-specific stem cells, to withdraw the publication. A spokesperson at the journal said that they had not yet received a request to take back, but have e-mailed all 25 co-authors asking for clarification of the allegations(指控). Roh told news media that of the 11 stem cell lines created from patients with diseases, nine were fake. Whether the two remaining lines were valid, and photographed repeatedly to stand in for the other lines, is not clear. Roh also claims that after a visit to Hwang on Thursday, he believes there were no stem cells at all, and that all of the colonies had died in the lab. "I heard some things that I haven't been aware of when I visited Professor Hwang at his request, that there are no embryonic stem cells," he told MBC.
These latest claim comes just 24 hours after a former Hwang cooperator, Dr. Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh, charged Hwang with fabricating his data. Back in June, the two men had co-authored a paper published in Science that detailed how individual stem cell lines were created for 11 patients through cloning. When Hwang's immoral deeds were uncovered last month, Schatten was already publicly distancing himself from his onetime colleague. But on Tuesday, Schatten, took the next step and asked that his name be removed from the work. His reasons？ "Careful re-evaluations of published figures and tables," he said in his letter, "along with new problematic information, now cast substantial doubts about the paper's accuracy." Hwang has still not responded to these new accusations(指控), and Schatten has declined to comment further.
Hwang's academic affair is the latest plot twist in a drama that's playing out in the Korean press. Several days after Schatten's initial break with Hwang, Seoul's news outlets cited a Korean government official and other sources in both Korea and the U.S., claiming that Schatten had met with
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