Slashdot Mirror
Korean Lab Worker Forced to Donate Her Own Eggs
An anonymous reader writes "According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Woo Suk Hwang had attained international fame by successfully cloning a human embryo, but he accomplished his feat by pressuring a lab worker into donating her own eggs. Consequently, Gerald Schatten, a cell biologist at the University of Pittsburgh, has severed his ties with Mr. Hwang and cited gross breaches of ethics."
I don't see anything in TFA about coercion ... where did that part come from?
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
A quick glance at the article shows it happened at Seoul University which is in South Korea. Last I heard, South Korea hadn't been overrun by the communists from the north.
Got Shadowrun? Awakened Worlds
"Dr. Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul University."
North Korea doesn't have the money, the technology, or the support necessary for stem cell research.
eclecti.cc
If the article is all there to go on, it is sensationalist.
I see nothing over coercion:
"Dr. Schatten, who was to have led the organization's board of directors, says he is now severing collaboration with Dr. Hwang, due to questions over the source of human eggs used in a 2004 cloning project, and errors in a 2005 paper coauthored by the scientists.
A 2004 news report in the journal Nature said at least one female laboratory worker had provided eggs for the project, an allegation that Dr. Hwang has denied on several occasions. Under U.S. rules, collecting eggs from women working on a cloning project would be considered unethical. In the original paper, published by the journal Science last year, the scientists said the eggs all came from anonymous donors."
Nothing about pressuring? Where are you getting that from, ScuttleMonkey, and do the /. editors RTFA's themselves?
"According to the WSJ" Schatten quit because he heard that one of the lab workers had donated eggs, but there is nothign about pressure in the WSJ article. Is there in the Nature one?
Typical misrepresentation of the facts by the submitter.
No where in the linked article was there any impliation that Dr. Hwang used any form of pressure, coersion, or other unscrupulous means to obtain the eggs.
The reasons given by Mr. Schatten is pretty clearly stated:
Under U.S. rules, collecting eggs from women working on a cloning project would be considered unethical. In the original paper, published by the journal Science last year, the scientists said the eggs all came from anonymous donors.
Hwang lied about where the eggs came from, and used (from the standpoint of the US) and inappropriate donor.
I know this is just user submitted stuff here, but could we at leat pretend like accurately representing the article is important. Or do we just assume no one will bother to read a 1/2 summary without some creative spin in the summary.
Pulled from Science, Vol 304, Issue 5673, 945 , 14 May 2004:
Last week Nature reported that in an interview a member of the research team admitted being one of the egg donors, raising questions about whether she profited professionally by being a co-author. Nature quoted bioethicists as saying that, to avoid any hint of coercion, there should be an arms-length relationship between the research group and the donors.
Hwang blames the language barrier for "a miscommunication." He says the woman had tried to explain that, in the future, she would be willing to donate eggs for such research by other groups. Moon-il Park, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Hanyang University in Seoul and chair of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the university hospital that approved the research plan--the eggs were harvested at the hospital--wrote in an e-mail that no one from Hwang's team was among the 16 volunteers. "I confirmed this after being contacted by Professor Hwang" regarding the allegations, he wrote.
Subvocalize this phoenetically. Dok-tur Wu Saugk Hwahng. The 'h' sound consonant is actually a part of the surname "Hwang" but the it is not a part of the Wu portion of his first name.
It's not really rational to misread something then exclaim that anyone is kidding you. If anyone, it's your dyslexic inner adolescent that is kidding you.
--
"pain is weakness leaving the body."Well, a prostitute knows what she's selling, doesn't she? A lab worker, on the other hand, probably expects to use her mind, not her ovaries.
Where did anyone other than this slashdot submitter accuse Dr.Hwang of forcing anyone?
On the contrary, Dr.Hwang is well known for being exceptionally careful to keep his experiements in ethical domain, even at the expense of progresses in his experiments. Please examine the facts first before making a serious accusation like this
Read the article, it says nothing about pressuring anyone about eggs, whoever wrote the blurb should be punished, they obviously have a political axe to grind against human cloning. The sad part is that most people who see this will believe this guy coerced a employee to donate an egg blindly without reading the story first...READ THE ARTICLE AND TELL ME WHERE IT SAYS HE "PRESSURED" HIS ASSITANT FOR EGGS! It doesnt, it says he misrepresented where the eggs came from, period. So for everyone who is all outraged about this, go to the article and read it before you start venting out of control.
Below is the full text of the article from the "Wall Street Journal".
U.S. Scientist Quits Stem-Cell Alliance
By a WALL STREET JOURNAL Staff Reporter
November 12, 2005; Page A5A
A prominent U.S. scientist is withdrawing from an international collaboration to create human embryonic stem cells.
Gerald Schatten, a cell biologist at the University of Pittsburgh, said he was severing all collaborations with the laboratory of Dr. Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul University.
Dr. Hwang, a veterinarian, has drawn international applause for leading the first effort to clone human embryos and extract their stem cells. Last month, he announced the formation of the World Stem Cell Foundation, an international alliance aimed at spreading that technology.
Dr. Schatten, who was to have led the organization's board of directors, says he is now severing collaboration with Dr. Hwang, due to questions over the source of human eggs used in a 2004 cloning project, and errors in a 2005 paper coauthored by the scientists.
A 2004 news report in the journal Nature said at least one female laboratory worker had provided eggs for the project, an allegation that Dr. Hwang has denied on several occasions. Under U.S. rules, collecting eggs from women working on a cloning project would be considered unethical. In the original paper, published by the journal Science last year, the scientists said the eggs all came from anonymous donors.
The above article does not state explicitly the matter of coercion, but the article strongly implies it. The pressure to produce results at Seoul University (and other Korean universities) is very intense, yet unfortunately, Korean society rejects the ethical standards that are routinely practiced and implemented in universities and laboratories in the West. Hence, American rules forbid workers on a research project from donating their own eggs for the research: the aim is to prevent any pressure from being applied to the workers. In Korea, the female lab worker most definitely felt pressure to "put out", and no one gave a damn.
For the old timers in this forum, I encourage you to do a search for the original story of the "cloning breakthrough". SlashDot had started a thread about it in 2004 or early 2005.
I will reiterate what I said in previous Slashdot threads about cloning. I salute the go-slow approach that the West (which includes Japan) has taken. Its people have repeatedly debated the ethics of the subject and enacted laws ensuring an ethical approach to the matter.
Such is not the case in Korea and, especially, China (which includes Taiwan province and Hong Kong). No national debate on the subject ever arose in Korea or China. The Koreans and the Chinese view cloning humans as merely another bland step in science. Hence, last year, the Chinese created a human-rabbit embryo but destroyed it after a couple of days.
prostitute? in korea? U can't imagine. . . me want you long time! nuther words, nuthin but there.
This oft sampled quote (me so horny, me love you long time) is originally from Kubrick's (rip) classic Full Metal Jacket, a film which brilliantly and disturbingly explores a dichotomy (perhaps even the dichotomy) inherent in human nature. It's set during the Vietnam "conflict" (heh) era. The plot events take place in a marine boot camp preparing infantry for deployment to Vietnam and shortly after, in the country itself. It has absolutely nothing to do with Korea or the US-Korean involvement of the 50s.
But please, don't let such trivial details stop your asian generalizations.
Schatten believed Huang's denials. He now has information that makes him doubt those denials. He's figured out that his colleague has been lying to his face for over a year. That's not evidence of being ok with forced egg donations/harvesting.
Funny you should mention that. Down in OZ we had a top flight race car driver called Dick Johnson
Such situations between superiors and subordinates are inherently coercive. Even if the superior adamantly claims that he won't take the refusal into account when considering promotions, raises, recommendations, etc. there's absolutely no way to assure that. Moreover, even if the superior genuinely won't hold it against the subordinate, the subordinate could still feel as though he's being coerced.
This is why, in these situations, it is assumed that coercion would occur, and the situation is therefore forbidden without exception.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Thank you for providing me with a good example of the right-wing propaganda I mentioned in my previous post.
If you quit buying what fauxnews sells you and do your homework, you will see that therapies using ESCs are practiced all over the world with stunning results. The most amazing progress is made in regenerating heart tissue and there's also some stunning progress in spinal cord injuries.
Don't go silently into that peaceful night
6 hours past, in the meantime two more BS postings from ScuttleMonkey, but neither an update nor an apology by ScuttleMonkey and the author of the article! Posting false accusations and playing with a researcher's reputation is the only unethical misdeed here.