Disgraced Clone Expert Barred from Work
By The West Australian,
The West Australian
| 07. 31. 2008
South Korea will not allow disgraced cloning expert Hang Woo-suk to resume human stem cell research, it has been reported.
Hwang's request was turned down by the country's national committee on bioethics, Yonhap news agency reported on Thursday.
The health ministry declined to comment on the report but said it would brief the media on Friday.
"He engaged in unethical and wrongful acts in the past and the committee decided to reject it," a source who took part in the committee meeting was quoted by Yonhap as saying.
"One committee member strongly argued that it would bring shame on the whole country," the source said.
Hwang's claims that he created the first human stem cells through cloning were ruled to be bogus, and he is banned from research using human eggs.
But the scientist is now engaged in animal cloning at the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, which in December asked for the green light to begin a new embryonic stem cell research project using aborted human eggs.
Still on trial for fraud, embezzlement, ethical breaches and other charges, Hwang has...
Related Articles
By Megan Molteni and Anil Oza, STAT | 10.07.2025
For two years, a panel of scientific experts, clinicians, and patient advocates had been hammering out ways to increase community engagement in National Institutes of Health-funded science. When they presented their road map to the NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya last...
By Shoumita Dasgupta, STAT | 10.03.2025
President Trump and health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have characterized the rise in autism diagnoses in recent years as an epidemic requiring emergency intervention.
This approach is factually wrong: The broadening definition of autism and the improvement in diagnosis...
By Abby McCloskey, The Dallas Morning News | 10.10.2025
We Texans like to do things our way — leave some hide on the fence rather than stay corralled, as goes a line in Wallace O. Chariton’s Texas dictionary This Dog’ll Hunt. Lately, I’ve been wondering what this ethos...
By Julia Black, MIT Technology Review | 10.16.2025
Consider, if you will, the translucent blob in the eye of a microscope: a human blastocyst, the biological specimen that emerges just five days or so after a fateful encounter between egg and sperm. This bundle of cells, about the size of...