| 2005/11/26 (14:50) from 129.206.196.193' of 129.206.196.193' | Article Number : 274 |
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| Korean Leaves Cloning Center in Ethics Furor |
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- November 25, 2005 Korean Leaves Cloning Center in Ethics Furor By JAMES BROOKE TOKYO, Nov. 24 - The South Korean researcher who won world acclaim as the first scientist to clone a human embryo and extract stem cells from it apologized Thursday for lying over the sources of some human eggs used in his work and stepped down as director of a new research center. After months of denying rumors that swirled around his Seoul laboratory, the researcher, Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, confirmed that in 2002 and 2003, when his work had little public support, two of his junior researchers donated eggs and a hospital director paid about 20 other women for their eggs. On several earlier occasions, he had said that he did not use eggs harvested from subordinates and that no one was paid for egg donations. "Being too focused on scientific development, I may not have seen all the ethical issues related to my research," Dr. Hwang, a veterinarian by training, told a news conference in Seoul on Thursday. "I should be here reporting the successful results of our research, but I'm sorry instead to have to apologize." He said the staff donations had taken place without his knowledge. "We needed a lot of ova for the research, but there were not enough ova around," he said. "It was during this time when my researchers suggested making voluntary donations. I clearly turned it down." He said he later discovered they had donated eggs under false names in 2003. Although the egg donations by the junior researchers were not considered a legal or ethical violation, critics say that in the strict hierarchy of a scientific laboratory in a Confucian society like South Korea, junior members often feel great pressure to please their superiors. Under international medical ethics standards, researchers are warned against receiving eggs from members of their own research teams who are deemed to be in a dependent relationship. Payment for eggs was not illegal in 2003, but it was banned last January by South Korean law. Dr. Hwang and his team's production of stem cells from cloned human embryos in 2004 was considered a major step toward eventually treating conditions like Alzheimer's disease and spinal cord injuries. But the human eggs ethics controversy may give ammunition to his opponents, who warn that his work could lead to human cloning. His team also cloned a dog, an Afghan named Snuppy, who appeared on the cover of Time magazine, which declared his team's feat this year's most amazing invention. Dr. Hwang's fall from grace is a blow to South Korea, where he had become the modern, high-tech face that the nation seeks to project to the world. He appeared in national promotional campaigns. Korean Air recently declared him a "national treasure," giving him and his wife first-class tickets for a decade. Only last month, his research center, the World Stem Cell Hub, opened with $132 million from the South Korean government. Plans were announced to open satellite cloning centers in San Francisco and London. On Thursday, as part of what he called "repentance," Dr. Hwang resigned as head of the new center. His world reputation is now expected to suffer a major dent over his admissions that he lied to an international scientific journal over eggs obtained in what many see as an ethically murky manner. The scandal may also cloud plans to expand research to the United States, but Dr. Hwang said he planned to continue his laboratory work. Two weeks ago, on Nov. 12, widespread murmuring about the ethics of some of the human-egg gathering flared into the public eye when Gerald P. Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Hwang's American partner, announced that he was severing relations with him. The abrupt disintegration of the partnership was surprising because the two scientists had collaborated for 20 months and reported important findings together. Dr. Schatten's stated reasons for the rupture seemed comparatively minor. In a written statement, on which he has since refused to elaborate, he said his decision was grounded solely on concerns regarding egg donations in Dr. Hwang's research. This prompted Roh Sung Il, the administrator of MizMedi Hospital in Seoul, to disclose at a news conference on Monday that during 2002 and 2003, he made payments of $1,400 to each woman who donated eggs. Egg donation is an unpleasant procedure that involves a week of daily hormone shots, culminating with the extraction of eggs through a hollow needle. "For those who go through discomfort and sacrifice, it seemed natural to give some money as compensation," Dr. Roh told reporters. After the 2004 publication of a report on cloning in the British scientific journal Nature, Dr. Hwang's fame skyrocketed, with thousands of South Korean women volunteering to donate their eggs. On Thursday, Dr. Hwang said he had wondered why the hospital had become a regular source of eggs, while other hospitals were having difficulties. "I raised the matter, but Roh Sung Il, the administrator of MizMedi Hospital in Seoul, said that there were no problems in the procurement process and I did not raise the issue afterwards," he told reporters. After the ethical scandal flared this week, dozens of women in Dr. Hwang's Internet fan club have sent e-mail messages volunteering their eggs. Confirming the other longstanding rumor, South Korea's Health Ministry said Thursday that an ethics investigation at Seoul National University had found that the two junior scientists had given their own eggs for research. But it said those donations had not violated ethics guidelines because they were voluntary. As the scientists' egg donations were neither "coerced or coaxed" nor "aimed at making profit," there has been "no violation of ethics guidelines," Choi Hee Joo, a Health Ministry spokesman, told reporters before Dr. Hwang's announcement. In May 2004, Nature raised ethical questions concerning the origin of Dr. Hwang's eggs. At the time, Dr. Hwang denied that researchers in his team had donated their own eggs to his research. In an interview last May, he said all eggs had been harvested from volunteers without payment. He said Thursday that he had lied about it to Nature because the women had asked him to. "In the end, I could not ignore the strong request by the researchers to protect their privacy," he said. The Health Ministry also indicated that it planned to continue to support his work, which receives $26.5 million in annual government funds. While the ethics of the human egg collection and stem cell research remain subject to controversy, the scientific advances emanating from Dr. Hwang's laboratory do not. "I continue to believe the scientific accomplishments of Professor Hwang and his team at Seoul National University," Dr. Schatten, of the University of Pittsburgh, wrote in his parting statement of Nov. 12. Those accomplishments include three striking achievements. In the first, published in Science in February 2004, Dr. Hwang and his team said they had generated a line of human embryonic stem cells from the nucleus of an adult cell. This technique is an essential first step in the proposed treatment known as therapeutic cloning, which envisions converting one of a patient's adult cells into an embryonic cell, and then converting that cell into new adult cells to replace any damaged tissue. In Dr. Hwang's second report, which Science published in May this year, he announced a considerable improvement in the efficiency of his human nuclear transfer procedure, in which he went from requiring 248 human eggs to create a single human cell to just 17. With the improved technique, he said he had been able to generate embryonic stem cell lines from nine patients afflicted with spinal cord injuries, diabetes and other diseases. The advance was hailed as a further step toward making therapeutic cloning a practical treatment. The third report from the Korean team, published in August this year in Nature, announced the successful cloning of the dog, an animal previously resistant to cloning because its reproductive cycles are hard to predict and manipulate. Dr. Schatten also cited a minor error in a paper they published together, but said he did not believe that it would have altered the conclusions. Choe Sang-Hun contributed reporting from Seoul for this article, and Nicholas Wade contributed from New York. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top |
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