|
Charges that Korean
scientist Prof. Hwang Woo-suk fabricated groundbreaking stem cell
research made worldwide headlines on Friday. AP and other wire services
sent out alerts announcing Hwang's press conference, where the
researcher insisted he did make stem cells, from which theoretically
any body tissue can be grown, tailored to individual patients. Douglas Melton, a director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute,
said Thursday that he was "truly saddened" to hear of the report from
South Korea, "which, if true, is tragic", according to AP. "If the
accusations of fraud are documented, I think every one of his papers
has to be called into question, from the time he was a student," said
Dr. Gerald Fischbach, the executive vice president of the Columbia
University Medical Center in New York. But cloning expert Peter
Mombaerts of New York��s Rockefeller University disagreed. "We have to
give him the benefit of the doubt right now,�� Mombaerts was quoted as
saying. The U.K. science magazine Nature, which first reported on
ethical lapses in Hwang��s research, also said the charge called all of
the team��s past achievements into question. It quoted Alan Colman, a
member of the team that cloned Dolly the sheep in 1997, as saying if
the fraud charge turned out to be true, the hopes of many patients
would have been shattered, and funding for similar research in the
field would be severely compromised. He said the incident could taint
the field forever. The Scientific American magazine announced it is dropping
Hwang from a list of 50 top scientists of the year. The list was
published in its special December edition. The New York Times offered an idiosyncratic take on the
scandal, saying while the ��new disclosures are being presented as a
blow to Korean science, they can also be seen as a triumph for a cadre
of well-trained young Koreans for whom it became almost a pastime to
turn up one flaw after another in [Hwang��s] work.�� The U.K. Financial Times said, ��The fracas has plunged Korea
into a deep national depression.�� The LA Times reported on a Korea
plunged into shock, quoting a colleague of Hwang��s at Seoul National
University as saying, ��We can declare today a day of national infamy.�� The French magazine Science and Future said that the World
Stem Cell Hub formerly run by Hwang was coming to an end, while the
German weekly paper Die Zeit in an article titled ��Waking from a Dream��
said, ��The academic world faces a crisis of fabrication, schemes and
immorality.�� Japan��s Yomiuri Shimbun put the story on its front page,
headlining it, ��Korean People Shocked by Betrayal From Their Hero.�� The
Mainichi Shimbun quoted an expert as saying, ��Once stem cells are
produced they are generally frozen, so it doesn��t make sense that there
are no stem cells now.��
([email protected] )
|
