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Prof. Gerald Schatten from
the University of Pittsburgh requested funds totaling US$200,000 from
Korean cloning expert Prof. Hwang Woo-suk last September, one month
before the Oct. 19 opening of the World Stem Cell Hub in Seoul.
Schatten publicly severed ties with Hwang only two months later. It is
unclear where the money came from. According to materials obtained by the Chosun Ilbo Tuesday,
$152,451 of the money was to be shared between Schatten and fellow
doctors Calvin Simerly and Laura Hewitson, with the lion¡¯s share of
$79,858 going to Schatten himself. The remainder covered flight tickets
worth $15,000 for the three of them and materials and PR costs of
$32,549. In the written request, Schatten describes the money as
¡°effort on project,¡± but there are suspicions that it was simply the
professor¡¯s price for putting his name behind Hwang¡¯s research in
Korea. The invoice covers ¡°the period from Sept.1, 2005 to Dec. 31,
of 2005,¡± raising the question whether Schatten received similar sums
of money from Hwang every four months. In June, Hwang told the Chosun Ilbo, ¡°Our whole research team
consists of 10 teams including foreign collaborators. Recently, we sent
$200,000 in research funds to one such foreign research team.¡± Since he
added, ¡°We won¡¯t get more government support than we are currently
receiving,¡± the suggestion is that the money came out of Korean
government coffers. A Seoul National University source confirmed Schatten attached
the invoice to an e-mail on how the Stem Cell Hub could be developed
into a business. ¡°But we¡¯re not sure if the funds were sent from
Hwang¡¯s personal support funds account or from SNU¡¯s
Industrial-Academic Cooperation Foundation,¡± the source added. (englishnews@chosun.com )
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