Ethical lapses cloud cloning success
WORTH REPEATING
South Korea’s high- flying stem cell researchers — reputedly the best in the world at cloning — have stumbled badly in handling the ethical issues of their controversial craft. Worse yet, the research team’s leader lied in an effort to hide his ethical lapses. We can only hope that he has not also lied about the astonishing scientific achievements of his research team. The South Korean team forged ahead of all its rivals by becoming the first to extract stem cells from cloned human embryos and the first to clone a dog, an enormously difficult feat. The team felt so confident that it even announced plans to open laboratories in the United States and England to create embryonic stem cell lines for researchers unable or reluctant to do so themselves. Then came the ethics debacle. For the experiments, Dr. Hwang Woo- suk used eggs donated by two of his junior researchers, a practice forbidden by Western standards because there is no way a subordinate’s donation can be truly voluntary when her job may depend on her co- operation. One of his collaborators also paid some 20 other Korean women about $ 1,400 ( U. S.) apiece for their eggs. That, too, is deplored by many Western ethicists who fear such payments inevitably exploit poor women. How harshly Hwang should be judged for such transgressions is a matter of dispute. Supporters claim that he was unaware of these transactions, which were legal at the time and whose ethical status was murky. But what really torpedoed Hwang was the cover- up: his repeated lies to the effect that his eggs were donated by unpaid volunteers. These misrepresentations led his most prominent American collaborator to sever ties because his trust had been shaken. Ten days ago, Hwang apologized for lying and stepped down as head of his new research centre, although he will continue his pioneering work as a researcher. In South Korea, the public has rallied to his defence and women there are signing up in droves to donate eggs. South Korea seems to be emerging from the crisis by imposing even stricter egg donation standards than apply in the United States. The key unresolved issue is whether lying about egg donations suggests that the Korean team may have lied about its scientific results. So far there is no evidence of that. Indeed, American collaborators and observers remain confident that the team’s achievements were real. But science is an enterprise that relies heavily on trust. The Koreans should not be surprised if their next scientific breakthrough is greeted with extreme caution. This is an edited version of an editorial that appeared in the New York Times.