South Korea's national disgrace: Faked Stem Cell Results

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-121505clone_lat,0,1189958.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Korean Cloning Pioneer Accused of Falsifying Results
By Barbara Demick, Times Staff Writer


SEOUL -- In what has been billed as a national disgrace, collaborators of the renowned cloning pioneer Woo Suk Hwang publicly accused him of fabricating results in a landmark stem cell report.

The apparent unraveling of Hwang's achievement is a setback for those who had hoped his work would lead to cures for paralysis and diseases, such as Parkinson's, and is a deep embarrassment to the South Korean scientific community.

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"We can declare today a day of national infamy," Lee Wang Jae, assistant dean at Seoul National University, was quoted today as telling the South Korean media.

Hwang has been based at the university.

Lee said that nine out of 11 cloned stem cells described in a historic paper published in the June edition of the journal Science were fabricated and that the authenticity of the other two were in doubt.

Hwang, a flamboyant 52-year-old veterinarian who was frequently quoted in the international media, has been hospitalized for stress over the past week. He declined to make a comment last night despite the increasing number of reporters camped out at the university hospital.

Earlier in the day, Roh Sung Il, the administrator of Seoul's MizMedi Hospital who had helped obtain human eggs for the research, told South Korea's MBC television that Hwang had admitted to him that some of the published research was faked.

According to Roh's account, an experiment in cultivating stem cell lines from specific patients had failed because of a fungus that had contaminated the specimens.

The doctor also said that Hwang intends to retract his published paper, although a spokeswoman at the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, which publishes Science, said it has received no such request.

Earlier this week, coauthor and University of Pittsburgh researcher Gerald Schatten asked to have his name removed from the paper.

Meanwhile, a long-anticipated investigative documentary was aired today in which a junior researcher claimed that Hwang had ordered him to produce doctored photographs for the published report.

"I just did what he told me," said the visibly nervous researcher, whose face was obscured on camera.

Identified only by Kim, his surname, by the MBC, a South Korean government-funded network, the researcher said he took multiple photographs of a single stem cell line from different angles to make it appear "that there were more than there really were."

So far, the allegations against Hwang only apply to his claim to have cloned patient-specific stem cells. But he is likely to draw scrutiny to his earlier achievements, most notably a February 2004 study in which he was credited with the first cloned human embryo.

Hwang also made headlines in August, claiming to have created the world's first cloned dog. The Afghan puppy, "Snuppy," was featured last month on the cover of Time magazine as one of the "most amazing inventions of 2005."

Hwang's rapid fall from grace began soon afterward when allegations surfaced that he had violated international ethical guidelines in his human-cloning research by using eggs from his researchers.

After initially denying the charge, Hwang apologized and resigned as head of the World Stem Cell Hub at Seoul National University. The flap caused a tremendous backlash from South Koreans, who consider Hwang one of the leading national heroes.

Thousands of women volunteered to donate their eggs to his research. Angry advertisers, politicians and viewers threatened to boycott the television network MBC, which had first aired a documentary on the egg-donation issue.

The television documentary that ran last night on the stem-cell fraud had been delayed because of pressure on the network.


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Times staff writer Karen Kaplan contributed to this report.

 

You liberals are obsessed. You simply can't help yourselves. Every conversation with you turns into a Bush bash-a-thon. I feel sorry for the negative mindset you carry through your lives.

This story is about a South Korean scientist, for crying out loud.

 

First of all, the article was the one that claimed that it had been described as a national disgrace, not me.

Secondly, you need to work on your English skills. I'm serious. They are causing you to misinterpret key words.