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Prime Human Cloning Researcher Humiliated

Posted by Zonk on from the political-setback dept.

Starker_Kull writes "Today, the first scientist to clone human egg cells, Dr. Hwang Woo-suk, was forced to resign from his post for 'breaches of ethics'. It appears that the ethical breaches consisted of overzealous assistants who volunteered their own eggs for use. After Dr. Hwang declined the offer, the assistants secretly donated their eggs under false names. After Dr. Hwang discovered the deception, he tried to cover it up to protect his researchers - but the news eventually leaked out."

19 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe I'm confused ... by rkcallaghan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But what exactly was unethical about lab workers also being donors in the first place?

    ~Rebecca

    1. Re:Maybe I'm confused ... by dbolger · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I am not a scientist, so I'm not sure, but I think the fact that they used false names brings the ethics of the researchers into some disrepute. The chap tried to cover it up to protect their reputations, and in doing so brought himself into disrepute. Its a horrible little circle :(

    2. Re:Maybe I'm confused ... by tgv · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Any relation between an employer and employee is a minefield, but in this case ethics demands that the eggs were donated voluntarily. That can be easily doubted in the case of subordinates in a strict hierarchy.

      And, IMHO, it should be, but that's (as I said) my opinion.

    3. Re:Maybe I'm confused ... by xappax · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm sure the reason the general public is concerned is that it seems like a "breach of ethics" or as we say in the rural US, it "ain't raight". However, I think the reason it created waves in the scientific community is that researchers are expected to remain as distant as possible from their experiments as possible, in an effort to keep their observations as objective as possible. You can't do good science if your personal emotions and ego are wrapped up too tightly with the experiment.

    4. Re:Maybe I'm confused ... by jcaren · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Whats the big deal?

      How do we know he did not know about it? In such
      situations you shoiuld assume the worst.

      A similar example is nuclear reprocessing facility workers
      taking off thier RAD badges, to ensure that they can
      do overtime without exceeding thier safe legal dose.

      When health and safety found out (as usual, via the
      natiaonal newspapers), the employer said that it did not
      notice employees in the hazmat areas without badges and
      because of this they were never prosecuted.

      Moral of the story: ignorance is a good excuse - if you
      can get away with it.

    5. Re:Maybe I'm confused ... by Halfbaked+Plan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You can't do good science if your personal emotions and ego are wrapped up too tightly with the experiment.

      Whoah! That would rule out just about any scientist. Or anybody else doing any kind of work they care about.

      Which leaves the work for dispassionate drones and the mediocre, I suppose.

      --
      resigned
    6. Re:Maybe I'm confused ... by flyingsquid · · Score: 4, Insightful
      But in this case Dr Hwang was unaware of this, so it does make me ask - "whats the big deal?"

      He says he was unaware of it. However, Hwang also paid for the eggs- about 1,400 dollars per donor, from his own pocket- but claimed in his _Nature_ paper that the eggs were from volunteers. So he's already been caught lying about how he conducts his research, why should we believe him now?

      Furthermore, at least one of the women he took eggs from was one of his graduate students. Now, as a grad student you basically depend on your advisor for everything: funding, office space, research opportunities, help with your PhD, a successful defense of your PhD, letters of recommendation for jobs and scholarships. No academic relationship is as open to abuse as the relationship between a graduate student and supervisor, because the advisor has so much power and the student, so little. Asking Jane Doe off the street for her ova is one thing- she can say "no", and what can you do about it? Asking your graduate student is another thing entirely: she knows you can do any number of things to crush her career, so she's pressured to say yes. It's a disgusting abuse of power and this creep should never work again. Sure, innocent until proven guilty and all... but the fact that he's resigning and his collaborator is rushing to distance himself is pretty telling.

      Finally I find his defense pretty ludicrous. He said they went behind his back to donate eggs? That's not much of a defense, to say that you ran such a sloppy operation and did such a piss-poor job of conducting your research that you didn't even realize your own students were donating their ova. That, and it's just a little hard to swallow.

    7. Re:Maybe I'm confused ... by pla · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The line between voluntary and reluctant donation is very vague because it can be assumed that lab workers can easily be put under pressure

      I hate to break it to you, but outside the hard physical sciences, at least 90% of research involves freshmen and sophmores (and mostly female at that) "pressured" into "volunteering", usually for a significant part of their grade in an "intro to experimental methodology" (or comparable) class.

      The problem here involves pure and unadulterated BS politics. The professor "lied" to protect his staff, the info got out anyway, so his affiliation panicked over the nature of his work and requested he take a hike. Nothing more, nothing less.

      And the real pity here? Not just his career - He'll get another non-research academic job within a few years. No, instead, we should feel bad about the invalidation of his findings just because of a combination of unfortunate circumstances, with his area of study not the least of which.

    8. Re:Maybe I'm confused ... by flyingsquid · · Score: 3, Insightful
      The point isn't that the eggs were paid for (by Roh, not Hwang; I misread that part) the ethics of that are debatable, and at the time it was legal. What's sketchy is that Hwang's Nature article implies that the eggs weren't paid for. If you want to purchase eggs, go ahead and do it, but don't lie about it.

      Hwang denies knowing about this part and claims he was baffled where all these eggs were coming from. I suppose it's possible he had nothing to do with this and didn't think to question his good luck... although it does raise the question of exactly who came up with the roughly $30,000 that would be needed to pay 20 women $1,430 apiece for their ova. However, at the same time you've got some of his underlings donating their ova... and he also claims to be ignorant of that as well.

      If they were confident of their case they'd fire him.

      Not necessarily. If he resigns he can say he's innocent and just doing it for the greater good. But firing him means that they'd have to admit that wrongdoing occurred. And that raises uncomfortable questions, like "why didn't you guys know about this stuff?", or even worse, "did you guys know about this stuff?" and "why didn't you do something about this sooner, like in 2004 when the first allegations came out?" Also, he may have some leverage. Assuming he was involved in this stuff, then I'd imagine people must have been pulling strings, bending rules, or at least looking the other way instead of asking tough questions. The agreement would probably be that they'll give him a (relatively) graceful exit and in return he will keep his mouth shut.

      I mean, look at the Judith Miller saga. She was a total screwup- she cocked up the WMD story, she got too close to her sources and started becoming a mouthpiece for them instead of objectively evaluating their views, she didn't keep her editors informed of how she was involved in the Plame case... the New York Times should have thrown her out the door a long time ago. Instead, she resigned. Likewise, Jayson Blair, the guy who made up a bunch of stories in the Times? Resigned. If you really want to get rid of someone, you need to give them an easy way out or they'll fight you tooth and nail.

    9. Re:Maybe I'm confused ... by danila · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It is confusing to call this an ethical problem, because it has absolutely NOTHING to do with ethics, but only with so-called "professional ethics".

      There is nothing whatsoever ethically wrong with using eggs from your teammates. But it does violate some code of conduct that people somewhere made up. This is a technical mistake that absolutely should not make man ashamed.

      The guy who stirred everything and made the noise about this issue (Gerald Schatten) is scum and a moron. It is he who should resign and kill himself, not professor Woo-suk.

      --
      Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
  2. I don't get it by Tx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Last time this story came around, it wasn't clear to me that this guy did not know his researchers had donated their eggs. If he'd been a cold bastard and put all the blame on the researchers in question as soon as he found out, he'd probably have got away with it. Instead he tried to protect them, and this is what he gets for it.

    Ah well, no good deed goes unpunished, as the saying goes.

    --
    Oh no... it's the future.
    1. Re:I don't get it by elgatozorbas · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Last time this story came around, it wasn't clear to me that this guy did not know his researchers had donated their eggs. If he'd been a cold bastard and put all the blame on the researchers in question as soon as he found out, he'd probably have got away with it. Instead he tried to protect them, and this is what he gets for it.

      You will never know what happened, neither will I. The only thing we know is that these eggs were used (let's assume that is true, because even that you cannot know). Everything else is hypothesis and should be treated as such.

      Maybe he was to blame, maybe someone else. One way or another unethical stuff happened and the boss takes the blame. Note that this does not necessarily mean his career is over. Just think of German scientists being adopted by the US after WWII. If this guy is really an international authority, he will be back in business in no time.

    2. Re:I don't get it by whitehatlurker · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Two things.
      1. It is his research lab, it is his responsibility that the research is correct and "above board". The buck stopped at his desk and he made the mistake of trying to cover up unethical practices rather than discarding the results.
      2. He should have disclosed this as soon as he found out (or as soon as he confirmed it) and recanted his work on the topic. If an inquiry showed him to be above blame, he could have continued without that research. As it is, he participated in the deception, and research continues without him.
      --
      .. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
  3. Bad Staff by CmdrGravy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think the good Dr has been a rather unfortunate here, by the sounds of it his researchers are entirely to blame. However he is ultimately responsible for the actions of his staff and this is why he has taken the decision to resign from his public appointments.

    I wish more public figures acted with this level of integrity. We are seeing situations arise increasingly frequently where it turns out that no blame at all attaches it's self to public figures no matter what they or there staff/departments may have been engaged in and I hope the actions of this Dr can be a lesson to the next government minister who discovers his department has been acting illegally and realises that the excuse they didn't really bother to keep up to date with what their department was doing is not good enough.

  4. Re:What exactly is the problem? by geoffrobinson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's always the coverup that gets you, not the original crime. Martha Stewart, Richard Nixon...

    --
    Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
  5. unfair by penguin-collective · · Score: 4, Insightful

    From the BBC story, this sounds grossly unfair to Dr. Hwang.

    According to the BBC, Dr. Hwang did not attempt to violate the policy, he did not even know about the fact that the women donated, and it is clear that he wasn't trying to circumvent the policy either. It sounds to me like he did nothing wrong.

    Yes, he did lie to Nature about it, but I find his justification acceptable. While there are some ethical considerations that go into publishing a journal, Nature has no business conducting ethics investigations, and this particular aspect of the experiment had no bearing on the scientific validity of the results.

    To me, this story mostly reflects poorly on Nature--attempting to pry into areas that really are none of their business--and the Korean research establishment.

    Hats off to Dr. Hwang for being willing to take the blame for something he didn't do. I suspect that his motivation is to keep human cloning research going, and he knows that the media and politicans would continue a feeding frenzy over this as long as he stays in his job.

  6. The difference being... by WindBourne · · Score: 4, Insightful

    that these researchers used their own, rather than an assitant's cells.

    When this story broke, the first instance of it was that the assistant was forced. Now, we have that she donated. Which is right? Did she change the version so that she could keep her job? We will never know the truth.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  7. Oh yes... by JayBlalock · · Score: 3, Insightful
    That the provenance of the donated eggs is questionable OBVIOUSLY invalidates all the rest of his research! Guess there's STILL no human cloning after all, huh? And good thing too!

    /sarcast

    I mean, seriously. Am I alone in thinking that this sounds MORE like the morality police casting about desperately for a reason to discredit the man and his work?

    --
    Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
  8. I call BullSht on all fake outrage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The eggs were donated voluntary with absolutely no pressure and no solicitation. Dr. Hwang Woo-suk did nothing wrong but has to be apologetic because of the oppressive governments.

    Hey oppressive governments, if you're so concerned about ethics, why don't you make torture illegal for real and enforce anti-torturing laws by prosecuting soldiers, police, and government officials who engage in torture, cover up torture, or obstruct investigations of torture? Or would that be to ETHICAL for you? (And yes, this includes you, America)

    Whenever a politician or news reporter talks about ethics, it's complete B.S. They act all high-and-mighty about stem cell research but evidently have absolutely no outrage against torturing people. I call B.S. on anyone who emanates fake outrage over stem cell research.