Hwang Woo-Suk

From ArticleWorld

Hwang Woo-Suk is a Korean scientist who fell from grace following allegations of unethical practices surrounding his cloning and stem cell research in 2005-2006.

Originally, from a very poor mountain village in central Korea, Hwang Woo-Suk worked on a farm to pay for his education. He studied at Seoul National University to be a verterinarian, although his mentors urged him to study medicine. He eventually acquired a research position at his alma mater. He teaches theriogenology and biotechnology at SNU.

Rise to fame

This full-time researcher shot to fame when he claimed that he and his labmates had cloned a cow, Yeongrong-i in February 1999 and two months later in April 1999, another cow, Jin-i. The absence of an accompanying paper surprised the scientific community. Nevertheless, all this was very well received by the Korean media and public. The bigger news came in Febraury 2004, five years later when Hwang and his teammates claimed that they had created a viable, stable embryonic stem cell. This time they followed it up with a paper that they submitted to Science ( March 12th issue). What was so amazing is that they achived it inspite of the complexity of primates. The implications were huge: embryo harvesting would not be an issue for stem cell researchers any longer. They could make one in their labs Hwang explained that he got around certain problems by using 242 eggs to create a single cell-line. The creation of stem cell lines implied that there would no longer be the issues of rejection and autoimmunity to deal with in the case of organ transplants

In addition, his lab cloned an Afghan hound “Snuppy”.

The Controversy

Besides the absence of a paper accompanying the announcement of the cloning of cows, Hwang faced several allegations. Gerald Schatten, a collaborator from University of Pittsburg suddenly announced the termination of the collaboration. In addition, he stated in a communication to Science that he wanted to withdraw his name from the paper that was published in the March 12 2005 issue. The editors at Science refused to do so. Subsequently, it was alleged that he coerced several of his labmates to donate eggs and that he paid donors at MizMedi $1400.00 for egg-donations. Hwang and his team claimed that they had cloned 11 cell lines. In such a case, each cell line should have its own genetic make up and the DNA profile must be different. However, according to Roh Sung-il, the DNA of nine of the 11 cell lines was identical. In addition, it was alleged that the different photos submitted to Science belonged to the same cell.

Consequences

Hwang found great support, politically and from the public. Many women registered to be donors. Advisor Park Ki-young intentionally withheld information from the Roh-government about details of Hwang's allegiation for misconduct. She was quick to point out the breach of ethics by MBC’s journalists. Park announced her intent to resign from the advisor post on January 10, 2006 after a long silence.

On January 11, 2006, the fall from grace seemed obvious: the post office withdrew the stamp commemorating Hwang's research. (Undettered, Hwang returned to his lab at SNU after a brief absence.)

Today Dr.Hwang Woo-Suk, a national hero, is under investigation.