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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."
This one goes in the "mad scientist" file. Talk about complete loss of perspective.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
I think you grossly misunderstand Communism. Communism is not the same thing as fascism, authoritarianism, or anything along those lines. In fact, it's not a governmental so much as an economic system. I'm not advocating it, all evidence shows that Communism does not work. Nevertheless, it is not "evil." If you take the word "communist" out of the above post, it'll work fine.
Le français vous intéresse?
Questionable ethics from somebody working towards human cloning?
Why doesn't this surprise me?
I don't know. Prejudice maybe?
What if she is a prostitute?
Got Shadowrun? Awakened Worlds
You are surmising a fiction not in evidence. This article posting is exactly why you cannot consider Slashdot a source of "news."
Reputable journalists preface opinion pieces as such. Infering facts that do not exist is not journalism.
I'm just looking for a source for the reports of this allegation.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
In more advanced countries, we name the laws after the wrong committed.
ie: It's "sex with a minor", not "Statutory Rape" since whether or not it was rape is not the problem being dealt with (it's a separate problem). The problem being dealt with is that, in fact, sex with a minor occurred. If the minor were raped, then a secondary charge of "raping a minor" would be enforced.
In some countries (notably my own) it is not considered rape should a 16 year old have sex with a willing 15 year + 11 month old.
Similarly, we call "improper practices" exactly that, "improper practices". We don't call it "forcing" or "coercion" because we don't know if that's true or not. There's every chance that a doctor so engaged in her duty might actually be willing to donate her eggs to further her research -- it doesn't seem unlikely that it could be so.
The title should be "Korean Lab Worker uses Improper Practices to Further Research".
I just wish people would use say what they mean and mean what they say, dammit. Thank God the laws in most countries are much more clear.
They have exhausted their other options when it comes to delaying embryonig stem-cell research.
Since several states have started passing budgets with money dedicated to embryonic stem cell research, its oponents have been growing increasingly rabid and vicious in the last few months. The 3B dollars approved under proposition 71 in California have been delayed so far for more than a year. Expect those well-meaning folk trying to save your soul at the expense of your body to jump on this news and integrate it in their propaganda machine ASAP.
If you are subscribed to the google news feed on the topic ("stem cell" or "stem cells" are good candidate strings (does that thing take regexp btw?)) you will see that almost every week a major new scientific announcement is made. There are signs of improvement for a lot of diseases previously thought incurable. Not all of this stuff gets mentioned in the mainstream media in the US.
Don't go silently into that peaceful night
Certain questions from a supervisor carry pressure and coersion- simply because the employee fears for their reputation and livelihood. That's precisely why we have numerous sexual harassment laws in the US.
If he asked the group or the donors individually, or dropped hints ("gee, we're having a lot of trouble here, wouldn't it be handy if we had some volunteer donors..." - either way it was coersion. The only way it would not be coersion is if the employee voluntarily donated.
Even then, there's a question of whether she was under self-imposed pressure (ie, "if I don't donate, the project will die and I won't have a job.")
That's one of many reasons the whole thing was unethical.
Please help metamoderate.
I agree with parent. Its kinda sad that Communism itself has become so associated with being 'evil', mostly I suppose because of the anti-Soviet rehetoric of the US Govornment, which i suppose was necessary at the time.
:o(
Oh, BTW absolute Capitalism doesnt work either. See USA for details
People confuse the utterly vile evil of Stalin & Mao with the Communist ideals, which are pretty benign and were designed to create an equal society. Mao (who was an order of magniture more dispicable than stalin) & co. abused these ideals for personal gain as soon as they took power.
In the end, communism doesnt really work in the real world because of human nature. Power corrputs, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Shame
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
The tag is misleading at best, if not an outright troll. There is no indication that the donor was pressured or coerced in any way. In fact there is no indication of any wrongdoing except for an allegation by the American scientist, with no offering of proof. Do we know what HIS motives were?
Whoever greenlit this should have caught it-- for God's sake the article itself is a blurb, it would take 30 seconds to read. If you're against human cloning there's plenty of fodder for your argument, you should not be allowed to use Slashdot as your pulpit to demonize the other side.
I disagree with the assertion that communism doesn't work. The problem is that communism doesn't scale. It works quite well in communities of up to a few dozen people, however.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
What everyone seems to be missing is that, if there's a power gradient, there's implicit coercion involved.
... it's the stem cells from human fetuses that they have a problem with. It's one of those "slippery slope" cases, whether you believe it or not.
Perhaps because only an idiot would abandon such a prestigious project and severe all ties with colleges of his own profession after all the work they have put in, at such a haste without even thinking about it or making sure that he could confirm all the details of the allegations?
That's why prostitution isn't a legitimate job.
No, the reason prostitution isn't a legitimate job (in the USA anyway) is because America has a very puritan view when it comes to sex (and see's the depiction of violence to be much more acceptable then the depcition of consensual sex) and the American government loves to invade people's bedrooms.
Don't think for one minute prostitution being illegal is because of protecting women's rights. If it was truly about that, then the government would set up standards of health, working hours, working conditions, pay, etc that people must follow if they are in the prostitution industry.
statutory rape laws protect women who are too young to have the capacity to consent, whereas a researcher in a genetic lab would have all the information she would need to consent to an egg donation
Obviously women are weak-minded and are unable to grasp the situation in order to protect their rights and themselves.[/sarcasm]
Before sperm donations could be paid for, the men working at the clinics would often donate their own sperm in order for there to be enough supply of sperm, because demand was so great and there simply wasn't enough unafilliated men donating to meet the demand there was for sperm. No blanket laws or guidelines had to be made to stop these men from donating their sperm. They knew exactly what they were doing. The same thing should be applied to women.
The idea of men or women being coerced into donating sperm or ovaries in order to keep their jobs is despicable. But If you're going to make a blanket policy to protect one sex, then you should protect the other as well. Otherwise you say the "protected" sex is too weak to protect themselves and make decisions, while the "unprotected" gender isn't important enough to be protected.
Apologies for the anon posting... have already moderated and don't want to waste that moderation.
"Missing" nothing. If the individuals involved don't see the situation that way, there's been no coercion. History is brimming with people who put themselves forward (often into harm's way) because they felt strongly about the value of the research they were doing -- from lab assistants to lab owners.
"Implicit coercion" is just a media twist to substitute external judgement. It's reasonable to judge minors incapable of giving informed consent, but let's not patronise adults.
but then, why is it not unethical for me to work 80 hour weeks for a few months to keep my job by keeping my project up and running? That woman damn well ought to have been under pressure if they can't get donors. The research is important and she, working on the project, was in the best position to know what was needed to keep it going.
We aren't talking about a woman being asked to give up a baby. We aren't even talking about an embryo. We are hypothetically talking about a lady giving up an egg towards research she probably cares at least a little about.
In the US, lots of things get called unethical and I don't know why. Even in science, you want the person in your lab group who will take a hit for the team if it won't leave any permanent marks. So the lady couldn't get pregnant that one time around. It is only unethical if you think it is wrong for someone to give up something with almost no value to help a project along. She lost about 28 days of her reproductive life.
Now if she had been told upon being hired to not get pregnant because they might need her as a donor, that gets into my unethical side. I don't believe there are many fields of work where involving yourself in someone's personal life to that extent is acceptable.
Though, I"m not attacking you. I'm really attacking a system that says a scientist can't give one more thing towards the success of the project.
The fundamental purpose of economics is to allocate goods and services efficiently by pricing their value correctly. Communism, of virtually all varieties, swear that they can do this pricing function better than capitalism. They never have. After so many decades, the default communist response to such a request is a quick change of subject or juvenile assertions that economics is not about efficient allocation.
Before the gulags and the death camps come along, there is the fundamental fact that communism can't set a price. All the subsequent violence stems from power mad people who won't make way when, once again, this fact is proven in the real world. There have been communist societies that didn't turn violent, the pre-marxian utopian experiments are a good example. Instead, they all shut themselves down when they figured out after a year or two that it was never going to work.
Only the ignorant and/or evil are communists these days.
As far as capitalism goes, it's funny how the closer to capitalism you get, the better your economic results get (compare economic growth rates and unemployment between France and the US). The closer you get to communism, the worse things become. The US is a capitalist state the same way that the USSR was a communist state. Both states followed their models imperfectly but where the US strays from principles, it performs worse economically, where the USSR strayed from principles (NEP period, for example) it performed much better.
I think you're misrepresenting the lawsof the United States here. There's no federal law against prostitution. Most states in the union do have laws against it, yes, but not all do. I know that Nevada allows it, as long as the brothels have licenses and the workers are treated fairly and screened for diseases. I don't know the positions of all the states with regard to prostitution, though. I would appreciate examples if anyone has any.
Sleep is futile.
Generally it's done via a comparative body count. You can't beat the Khmer Rouge in the % sweepstakes. They offed about a third of their population. Now that's revolutionary commitment!
Jesus wept.
Then it wouldn't be organ donation but eminent domain. Private companies couldn't take it against your estate's will and the government would have to pay the going market rate. Nobody would be without estate if they have viable organs. A full set of organs would be tens of thousands of dollars at least.
For all the slashdot crowd here comparing egg donation to sperm donation or, heaven forbid, having to work long hours, a basic interjection of reality (though IANAMD)
1) Egg donation is a surgical procedure. A painful surgical procedure. A single egg is not magically transported from the woman's body - essentially a surgical procedure akin to a biopsy is peformed. Yes, modern surgical methods are better, but the pain is real, the risk of surgery is real, which leads to:
2) Egg donation potentially impacts fertility. This is a delicate procedure, and things can go wrong.
Donating one's eggs to scientific research is a noble action, and I deeply respect the person who does so. But it's a serious matter, and the merest appearnace that outside pressure was applied to influence a worker to donate her eggs calls into question the ethics of the project team itself.
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
Actually communism worked pretty well... in small hunter gatherer tribes where every member of the community realised that his/her existence depended on the welfare of the other members. Therefore sharing resources, in that context, is the most obvious way to do things. In larger societies, it's more difficult to relate the welfare of Joe I Don't Dnow and Don't Wanna Know Who, to one's own best interest is much more difficult. And swindling is easy in any big structure, whatever type of government or private interest it resprents. Similarly capitalism works when the population is small enough that the accumulation of resources by a few does not significantly deplete the globally available resources. But since resources are finite, when the increase of welfare of a few signifies a significant drop of survival odds of a significant fraction of the population... things change and usually in bloodshed, since the established elite is not likely to be willing to forfeit its priviledges for the benefit of mere "commoners". Capitalism is the economic system of choice when rsources (and thereofore opportunity) seem plentiful, while communism is the system ofchoice of desperate people who think of survival, when resources appear very limited. The failure of the first is the the system itself whic acts as a positive feedback pump which causes resources to become ever scarcer for the greater number. The failure of the second is that as soon as survival seems assured, people start wishing to improve their personal lot with respect to their fellow humans. Their respective success is their downfall in the end.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
typical comment of average american. most of the americans think that everything non american is communist, and everything communist and therefore non-american is bad, even though they don't understand communism or socialism, or whatever else, or even democracy for that fact.
good example is health care in canada. its socialist and it kicks ass. but we hate it because its socialist. here in US we get rapped all the time for health insurance that doesn't cover anything. we pay high fees, we get shitty coverage that has high deductables, and most of us cannot even afford medical help that we need. and we love it because its "democratic!" and why do we hate canadian? because its communist. because rich people such are doctors don't want the government to sponsor our health insurance, because then they wouldn't be able to charge arm and a leg for their service. you don't think this is true? pay attention to your bill next time you go to dentist. you get rapped in the ass. why is that insurance communist and bad? because rich people tell us that. and most people just repeat after them because they are too fucking stupid to have their own opinion.
rich people control the government. they give our senators and congressmen donations, they elect them. (PLSC 101)
that is why government officials do whatever rich people want them to do. rarely do you see government doing something good for an average man (like spliting up Bell). look at microsoft for example. they rape people with their high prices and they force all the manufactures to only support their products (windows etc). ordinary people have to buy windows products if they want everything to work right (e.g. my grandma doesn't run linux, she's too old to learn it). so there was an antitrust suit against it? and what happened, microsoft paid pocket change to some other corporation, and they keep rapping whomever they please.
i love my country, just like everyone else. only difference is that i realize that US is not perfect in any way. matter of fact it sucks donkey balls and average american gets rapped every day, its just that all the rest of the world is fucked even worse.
if you don't see these problems, there are only two reasons for that:
a) you are fucking blind
b) you are ignorant as fuck
another good example of this shit is oil war. all the big car manufactuers invested a lot of money into fuel cells few years ago. just recently they all one after other stopped or slowed down research in that field. why you ask?
well, the oil industry is fucking huge in this country. everything runs on oil. oil industry 0wnz us. if they say prices are going to be $20/gal, then they are going to be that. we can't do shit about it. they pretty much forced automotive industry to stop investing into fuel cells, because if somebody made a car that was economical, clean, and quickly rechargable, they would be millioners and oil industry would suck cocks. they obiviously don't want to suck cocks so they will do anything to stop that shit from happening. remember, this country is run by money, and average american is blind to wtf is going on.
belive it or not, we are getting rapped every fucking day. no wonder there is such a high hemoroid problem here in the states. money runs this country and we are all fucked by it. corruption is everywhere. yes, our government too.
US is run by money. its not a democracy, its a republic. they tell you that you have freedom of whatver, but you actually don't. its just like communism or any other government for that reason. only difference is that people think they are free, yet they get rapped just like everyone else. big fish eats little fish. welcome to the real world.
fuck. fbi is on my door, bbl.
I know the parent was being funny, but on the contrary, eggs cost between US$10,000 to US$50,000. I'm curious to why they didn't just purchase the egg themselves instead of having one of the lab assistants to donate. The only viable reasonings that I can come up with is:
1. They didn't have enough money, which I highly doubt because with a project of this size, money's gotta be pouring in from somewhere. Though money conservation may be another reasoning, but once again, I don't believe money should've been an issue with this project.
2. The lab assistant insisted they use her eggs and was happy to donate them. There can be multiple reasons for that. She may have been an unknown lab assistance and if the project was sucessful, her name might have come up once in the findings document, but the top researchers would be the one getting a the credit. Now with her name gauranteed in the article, her fame can be used for multiple things such as taking her into higher levels of research or even lead governmental sponsered researches. I'm not sure what this lab worker exactly was, but if she was an undergrad, she's probably going to be garaunteed admission into any graduate program and if she was a graduate student, have her Ph.D papers signed off. Many of you can see this as 'betraying yourself' to get somewhere and I guess that's what the ethical reasons against this is for.
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His name is "Suk Hwang" -- which makes him phonetically gay, and therefore a communist agent.
How about American settlers? THey offed 90% of the native american population. Also the west was settled using the homestead act- the worst kind of capitalism where the federal governement would give a parcel of land and supplies to any family which would grab some land from the natives and kill all the natives in the area. Also if the rich in the US had not been shit scared of a communist revolution no new deal would have happened, no labor reforms , no social security. You would still be working 12 hour days 6 days a week in life threatening conditions with no job security or hope for retirement. I dont think communism works but we need to have a few communist countries around to keep the fear of god in the rich so they dont become too greedy
**Life is too short to be serious**
Everyone values their ability to grant access to their body. We typically only allow people we are close to (family, friends and lovers) or trusted individuals (health care providers) to do anything much more intimate than shake hands with us. Any violation of our body is seen as intensely repugnant: we have laws against rape and assault, and at least in the United States, a person can only be searched when there is a warrant, or there is probable cause to believe that a crime has been commited. We only allow medical procedures to be performed on people without their consent in emergencies when they are incapable of consent, and even in this case, people can prepare advance directives limiting what is done to them. That this is proper is the consensus view in the United States.
The disruption of ones personal life, and family/work scheduling conflicts are important, and the United States has labor laws, including Family and Medical Leave Acts, allowing some workers to claim some time as only their own. However, if you put these issues on a par with surgical procedures, then you are probably far off the social consensus.
The United States Congress, local legislatures, funding agencies, and universities and hospitals, have all set rules for employment conditions and biomedical research (most stringently for research using human subjects). If you think these rules are inappropriate, then you should to lobby these bodies to repeal these laws and guidelines. I suspect that you will have a tough time.
The woman might have come forward, wholly on her own initiative, and volunteered to be an egg donor for this project, but this is irrelevant. We have blanket codes of conduct in employment and biomedical research for a reason: there is a consensus that in a case like this any coersion would be so reprehensible that we need to eliminate any possibility of, or even the appearence of the possibility of, coersion or conflict of interest. These rules have to apply to everyone or they risk becoming a paper tiger, easily circumventable by anyone with power. It's imaginable that independent review boards could allow people to apply for exemptions to rules like these, but their integrity would have to be so unimpeachable, and the gains would be so minor, that I doubt it would be worth the time or the money: the risks far exceed the benefits.