The Speculist

We were rereading the 2005 Speculist in preparation for a year-end round-up post, when we came across a couple of posts from last May on the South Korean cloning successes:

• The Age of Therapeutic Cloning

• More from South Korea

At the time that Phil and I were writing about this great news we were hopeful that what Dr. Hwang had accomplished was the beginning of a very big thing - witness the title of that first post.

Incredibly, it may have all been an elaborate hoax.

When we read the news late last month that Dr. Hwang may have violated ethics by using the eggs of lab assistants, we were a bit nonplused. If the eggs were given voluntarily, and if Dr. Hwang didn't even know that his assistants were the ones giving the eggs, then why was it so disgraceful?

Considering the magnitude of Hwang's accomplishments and his hero status in South Korea, it seemed strange. We would have expected his country to rush to his defense, create new safeguards to make sure it didn't happen again, and then send Dr. Hwang back out to continue his work. Instead, Hwang (voluntarily or involuntarily) stepped down "from all public posts, including his chairmanship of the World Stem Cell Hub."

The weirdness of that apparent overreaction perhaps should have warned us that the rest of Hwang's research was in question. Nevertheless it came as a great shock to read that Hwang "faked his results."

At least 9 of the 11 tailored stem cell lines were completely faked. The other two can't be proved either - apparently there are presently no living tailored stem cell lines in Hwang's lab. There may never have been.

It's just shocking. Of course we understand the motive. Everybody would like to be a hero. But how did a smart guy like Hwang think he'd get away it? He went from being an anonymous respected researcher, to a pariah. Sure, there was a brief stint at the top of the world, but how satisfying could that have been? It was fake and he knew it.

Anyway, this news story gets our vote for the "Buzz Kill of the Year" award of 2005. It is our hope that the field of stem cell science will quickly recover from the damage this has done.

UPDATE: NPR had a segment on this controversy last night.

This has caused "shock and dismay" within the field of stem cell science and is considered a "national tragedy" in South Korea.