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Alleged Ethical Breaches By South Korean Cited

A leading University of Pittsburgh researcher on embryonic stem cells said yesterday that he will disengage from a recently launched collaboration with a team of world-renowned South Korean scientists because he is convinced that the lead Korean researcher had engaged in ethical breaches and lied to him about them.

The Pitt scientist, Gerald P. Schatten, has for more than a year been the prime American stem cell scientist working with the South Korean researcher, Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul National University. Hwang was featured prominently in news reports in 2004 when he and his co-workers became the first to grow human embryonic stem cells from cloned human embryos. Since then, he has become something of a national hero and a global scientific celebrity.

Human embryonic stem cells, which have the capacity to become every kind of human tissue and are highly coveted for their potential to treat a wide variety of diseases, had previously been harvested only from conventional human embryos created through the union of sperm and eggs.

By deriving stem cells...