TOKYO – Hwang Woo Suk, one of the world’s leading stem cell experts whose South Korean team cloned the first human embryo and created the first cloned dog, publicly apologized Thursday for ethical breaches at his lab and said he would resign from all his official posts.
Under mounting pressure from the international scientific community, Hwang, 52, admitted his team had used ova samples extracted from two of his junior scientists during research that led to the team’s historic cloning of a human embryo in 2003. Such practices are considered unethical in international scientific circles. Choking back tears, Hwang said he had not known about the women’s donations until the magazine Nature began investigating the source of his team’s ova specimens early last year.
Even after discovering the truth, however, he denied the allegations out of fear his project would be jeopardized, he said. The women, he said, had asked that their privacy be maintained. “Being too focused on scientific development, I may not have seen all the ethical issues related to my research,” Hwang said.
A national hero in South Korea, Hwang has recently been dogged by international allegations of ethical impropriety that have threatened to severely set back his work. Last month, Hwang, along with several leading scientists, launched the Seoul-based World Stem Cell Hub, a project aimed at seeking treatments for diseases that remain incurable.
But earlier this month, University of Pittsburgh researcher Gerald Schatten said he was pulling out of his association with Hwang, citing concerns about the way the group had obtained human eggs – whose difficult procurement is typically one of the most vexing obstacles to large-scale stem cell research.
The two women, in statements to a government commission that were later made available to the media, said they had made their donations in secret and under false names after Hwang had refused their offers. At the time, the team was desperately in need of additional ova for their stem cell work.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Hwang said Thursday that he had turned them down because it might pressure other female staffers to do the same. He said he confronted them in May 2004, after a reporter from Nature magazine made inquiries about the donations.
Ethical allegations persisted this year. Monday, Roh Sung Il, head of Seoul-based MizMedi Women’s Hospital, admitted he had paid about $1,447 each to 20 women to gather human eggs for Hwang’s research.
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