Fri, Nov 25, 2005 page5

• Seoul's cloning pioneer resigns

  ETHICAL VIOLATIONS Hwang Woo-suk admitted that researchers in his team had donated their own eggs and that other women had been paid for their eggs

  • AFP
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  South Korean cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-suk resigned his official posts yesterday to take responsibility for ethical violations by his team during landmark research to create the first cloned human embryo.

  Hwang said that researchers in his team had donated their own eggs without his permission and that other women were paid for eggs used in his breakthrough project, also without his knowledge.

  Hero

  Hwang, a Korean national hero and the first man to clone a human embryo, admitted that he had lied when ethical questions began to surface last year about the origin of the supply of human eggs available to his researchers.

  "I feel so sorry to speak about such shameful and miserable things to you people," he told a press conference in his first public comments on a scandal that has been brewing for months.

  "I again sincerely apologize for having caused concern at home and abroad," he said.

  Hwang said he was resigning all official posts including the chairmanship of a new research body, the World Stem Cell Hub, established last month by the government to produce stem cell lines here for research institutes worldwide.

  But Hwang said he would continue his own trail-blazing research and retained the backing of the government, which earlier yesterday said he had done nothing wrong.

  "There were no breaches of legal or ethical standards in the course of obtaining human eggs for the research," said a spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

  Hwang and his team in February last year announced the first-ever cloning of human embryos, from which they harvested "therapeutic" embryonic stem cells. This year they unveiled the world's first cloned dog.

  But in May last year the influential medical journal Nature raised ethical questions concerning the origin of Hwang's ova.

  Questioned by the journal, Hwang denied that researchers in his team donated their own eggs to his research.

  But the ethical cloud surrounding Hwang deepened this month when Gerald Schatten, a prominent researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, severed a 20-month collaboration with Hwang. He cited ethical breaches and accused Hwang of lying about them.

  Under internationally accepted medical ethics standards, researchers are warned against receiving ova from members of their own research teams who are deemed to be in a dependent relationship and vulnerable to pressure.

  "We needed a lot of ova for the research but there were not enough ova around," Hwang said at the press conference.

  He maintained, however, that when two researchers offered their eggs to Hwang, he turned them away. Then they went behind his back and donated eggs under false names in 2003.

  Truth

  He later found out the truth but lied about it to Nature because the women asked him to do so.

  "In the end, I could not ignore the strong request by the researchers to protect their privacy," Hwang said.

  Hwang also admitted that his team received some human eggs from women who received money in return. A colleague of Hwang said on Monday he had paid thousands of dollars for 16 human eggs without telling Hwang.

  The health ministry spokesman said the money was compensation for expenses only, rather than payment for the ova.

  He also said the purchases were made before South Korea enacted a new bio-ethics law this year outlawing the trade in human eggs.

  Despite expressing regret, Hwang was unclear about his responsibility for ethical violations, according to an ethics expert.

  "It was not clear what Professor Hwang was apologizing for," said Ulsan University medical ethics professor Koo Young-mo. "Hwang's remarks that the ova were donated voluntarily by his researchers and he was unaware of it were not so convincing," he added.
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