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."

Comments

Forced?

[whitehatlurker]

I don't see anything in TFA about coercion ... where did that part come from?

Re:Forced?

[Tlosk]

I don't see anything in TFA about coercion ... where did that part come from?
 
It's implied by the nature of the situation. Which is why it's prohibited. You might easily compare it to a statutory rape scenario. Are there people under 16 who can make sound judgements about whether to engage in sex? Probably, but in order to protect those who aren't we have made an arbitrary cutoff and whether the person was "willing" or not doesn't enter the equation, they are just off limits period.

A person who works in a lab cannot reasonably be expected to be free from improper pressures that could influence a decision to participate. So to protect them we don't allow it.

Re:Forced?

[daremonai]

Check out the Washington Post article, which has a lot more info (registration required, blah, blah, blah): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/11/11/AR2005111101836.html

Here's a snippet of the relevant section:

For many months after Hwang's 2004 publication, rumors had spread in scientific circles that the eggs Hwang used to achieve that landmark result had been taken from a junior scientist in his lab. That situation, if true, would be in violation of widely held ethics principles that preclude people in positions of authority from accepting egg donations from underlings. The rules are meant to prevent subtle -- or not-so-subtle -- acts of coercion.

Questions have also circulated as to whether the woman received illegal payments for her role.

Schatten said that Hwang had repeatedly denied the rumor and that he had believed Hwang until yesterday. "I now have information that leads me to believe he had misled me," Schatten said. "My trust has been shaken. I am sick at heart. I am not going to be able to collaborate with Woo Suk."

Re:North or South

[cheesee]

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.

Re:North or South

[PaintyThePirate]

"Dr. Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul University."

North Korea doesn't have the money, the technology, or the support necessary for stem cell research.

Re:gross breaches of ethics

[rolfwind]

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."

RTFA?

[MichaelPenne]

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?

Editors, read the article.

[freidog]

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.

When this came up on in 04

[hey hey hey]

Hwang says it was a language problem.

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.

Re:Schatten sure took his time severing those ties

[dbrutus]

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.

Re:gross breaches of ethics

[mrchaotica]

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.