Slashdot Mirror
Prime Human Cloning Researcher Humiliated
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."
...egg on his face.
sorry, but i will be here all week.
But what exactly was unethical about lab workers also being donors in the first place?
~Rebecca
Although he has resigned, the 17 identical copies of Prof. Hwang will continue to do his research for him.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I really fail to see how this is something worth resigning over. So, his assistants were a bit overzealous, and he didn't know about it until it was too late. Yes, he tried to cover it up, but did he try to fudge any of the research? Does this make his science bad in any way? Seems pretty silly to me.
Fill in your four or five-letter word of wisdom here _ _ _ _ _.
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.
I'm puzzled over something. How, exactly, does a woman donate an egg without anyone else knowing about it?
Sperm donations are easy to figure out (I'll leave the visuals to the reader's deranged imagination). But women? Unless I'm sorely mistaken, the extraction of a viable egg is a surgical procedure, and no matter how good Waldos have gotten over the years, I haven't heard of one sophisticated enough yet to allow a woman to perform that procedure on herself. So the question is, who performed the procedure, and who assisted?
"Three can keep a secret if two are dead." So goes the cliche. It's been proven accurate with this minor scandal. Unfortunately for the researcher, the gory details got out before he was able to either bring them forward himself or develop a solid-enough cover. But rather than looking to the surreptitious donors, I'd be looking for whoever did the egg extractions, and asking why they outed the mess. No publication credit? Money? Personality clash? Something I haven't thought of?
We now return to our regularly-scheduled slashdotting intellectual discussion, already in progress...
All the world's an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts.
Same thing is going on with this submission. The linked BBC story says nothing about Dr. Hwang being forced to resign. In fact, it sounds like he resigned voluntarily. The submitter added the "forced" and "humiliated" part himself.
It's almost as if some slashdot submitters don't like what this guy is doing and are making up whatever spin and hyperbole they can to discredit him. Shame on the editors for not reading the linked articles to check if the submission description is accurate.
Top human cloning expert gets "humiliated." Great. Now this guy is going to go bat-shit insane, move to some small island and start wreaking havoc.
Next article is going to be "Humiliated cloning experts buys thousands of linen suits, panama hats, and a cane then moves to small tropical island."
Great....
The ability to coerce subordinates into giving time, money, or even body parts is high in the scientific research fields because there are so few good quality job openings and much pressure to produce results. Therefore the need to establish an ethical boundary against having lab workers or other subordinates contribute anything but paid (often, but not always) labor to the project.
However, this happened in Korea where there is overwhelming pressure on people (applied since they are born) to self-sacrifice and give more and more to a group cause. There is also enormous pressure to serve without question the next higher figure in the chain of authority.
The director of the project was most likely right in claiming that there was no pressure to actually placed or implied on the lab workers to give up their body parts. However the social pressure was overwhelming, and all the director had to do was mention that 'donors' were needed and the lab workers would comply.
This is the type of situation that the ethical guideline was established to prevent. The director would have realized that his subordinants would have delivered the eggs and should have taken stronger measures to prevent this from happening. However, given the cultural context, it is unlikely that the director felt that he should abide by the ethical constricture.
Sort of like American rock star mentioning that he enjoys fellatio to couple of backstage groupies. No pressure, no insinuations, but the need is serviced without question.