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The tinderbox that caused Prof. Gerald Schatten to sever ties with
Koreans cloning pioneer Prof. Hwang Woo-suk was an interview a
researcher in Hwang¡¯s team gave in a leading scientific journal, the
Washington Post reported Sunday. The paper said Schatten, who ¡°served as an eloquent translator,
spokesman and a link to the centers of scientific power in the Western
world,¡± decided to split because he had evidence that Hwang obtained
human egg cells by unethical means, the U.S. paper said. The evidence
is an interview during which ¡°a young PhD student in Hwang¡¯s lab told
an interviewer from the scientific journal Nature that she and another
young co-worker were among several women who had donated eggs.¡± Ethical guidelines bar donations from junior team members
because they cannot be truly voluntary, while vociferous debate also
rages about the ethics of egg donation in general, which is sometimes
dangerous. ¡°Concerns about Hwang¡¯s experiments were amplified by the
rumors that the student had been paid for her eggs,¡± which Hwang
quickly denied, the daily said. Instead, Hwang blamed her poor English
for what he said was a misunderstanding, the paper said. The breakup has blighted a stem cell research project whose
future had looked bright until last month, when, according to the
paper, Schatten¡¯s ¡°eyes brimmed with tears repeatedly as he talked
about the benefits the project might bring to humankind.¡± (englishnews@chosun.com )
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