On the popular Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, an account called “Georgia Notes” (@格鲁吉亚小纸条) offers tips and advice to Chinese nationals planning a trip to the Republic of Georgia. In one post...
CGS-authored
A superstar at the University of Pittsburgh was not subjected to commonsensical oversight by his institution.
Gerald Schatten was senior author on a paper describing patient-matched stem cells created through human embryonic cloning.
The research, conducted by Hwang Woo-Suk in South Korea, later was proven an extraordinary fraud.
It is clear Pitt's standards were substandard. The Institutional Review Board took Mr. Schatten at his word that none of the women whose eggs were harvested was identifiable to the researchers. The board, it appeared, did not have jurisdiction.
But it did.
South Korean law requires that families of women who donated eggs would have priority for any resulting treatments. So the researchers must have a way of identifying the donors. Actually, Hwang drove one, a lab assistant, to the hospital for the egg extraction. She later worked in Schatten's Pitt lab.
Strict ethical oversight protects the subjects' privacy and safety. Harvesting eggs is dangerous and questions persist whether the women gave informed consent.
Schatten may have believed all was well until it became impossible to say so with a straight face...