Embryonic Stem Cell Scandal in Korea

Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul National University became famous when he published the first creation of human Embryonic Stem Cells by nuclear transfer  (Science, 12 March 2004, p.1669).  He rocketed to scientific super-stardom a year later, with the announcement that his team had created 11 new lines of human embryonic cells (Science, 19 May 2005, p.1).  Their success rate implied a 10-fold increase in the efficiency of the laboratory process.  Part of the success was attributed to the use of freshly-harvested oocytes from young, fertile women, instead of left over eggs from fertility treatments.  A few months later, Hwang's team announced the creation of Snuppy, the first cloned dog.  These successes made Hwang an international celebrity and a national hero.

Sadly, the prestige of  Woo Suk Hwang came crashing down in the fall of 2005, after a series of revelations which led to his resignation.

The first negative reports started with rumors that the human eggs used by Hwang's lab had been donated by Hwang's staff members.  This violated international ethical guidelines against senior scientists using bological donations from their underlings.  It emerged on further investigation that the staff members had also received financial rewards for their egg donations.  The head of Seoul's MizMedi Women's Hospital and a collaborator with Hwang, Sung Il Roh announced publicly in late Nov that he paid the women about $1500 each for "transportation expenses".  The SNU panel later found that the total number of human eggs Hwang's team used for the past three years was 2061, extracted from 129 donors.

In mid-Nov 2005, Dr. Gerald P. Schatten withdrew from his collaboration with Hwang and asked that his name be removed from the famous paper in Science.   Schatten, a biologist at the University of Pittsburgh, was the leading American in the collaboration.

The next revelation came out in Dec 2005: 9 of the 11 new human cell lines had been faked.

The full extent of the debacle emerged on 10 Jan 2006, when an investigation by Seoul National University concluded that all of the human stem cell results, going back to the original 2004 paper, were scientific forgery.  However, Snuppy really is a cloned dog.

In March 2006, Woo Suk Hwang was dismissed from Seoul National University.