South Korea approves cloning research
By Agence France-Presse,
Agence France-Presse
| 01. 12. 2005
SEOUL (AFP) - South Korea (news - web sites) gave official government backing to ground-breaking research that produced the world's first cloned human embryos.
The health and welfare ministry said a research team led by Hwang Woo-Seok, a Seoul National University professor, has been officially registered as a state institute and its research approved.
"Professor Hwang Woo-Seok's team will now be able to step up its research on stem cells under the government's management system," the ministry said in a statement.
In February 2004, Hwang's cutting edge research produced the first cloned human embryos to generate stem cells for therapeutic purposes.
Stem cells hold the key to potential cures for an array of diseases including diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer's and other disorders.
New legislation that took effect here on January 1 requires all bio-technology institutes to register with the government.
The legislation offers government support but also tightens government control in the ethically-sensitive field of human embryos research. South Korea last year banned the cloning of human beings and also bans stem cell research for commercial purposes.
Stem cells are nascent...
Related Articles
By Judd Boaz and Elise Kinsella, ABC News | 03.17.2026
By Gabriele Pichlhofer and Tino Plümecke, Guest Contributors
| 03.25.2026
A German translation of this interview will be published in May 2026 in the German GID MAGAZIN, which focuses on the market for reproductive technologies. For more information, visit: Gen-ethisches Netzwerk
Egg donation is currently prohibited in Germany and Switzerland, but both countries have been debating its legalization for years. In Switzerland, a legal framework is currently being developed, with a first draft expected by the end of the year. Yet the debate rarely draws on scientific evidence. Instead...
By Charles Pulliam-Moore, The Verge | 03.21.2026
Like many people, director Valerie Veatch was intrigued when OpenAI first released its Sora text-to-video generative AI model to the public in 2024. Though she didn’t fully understand the technology, she was curious about what it could do, and she...
By Ritsuko Kawai, Wired | 03.14.2026
On March 6, Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare officially granted conditional and time-limited marketing authorization to two regenerative medical products derived from reprogrammed iPS cells, marking exactly 20 years since the creation of mouse iPS cells.These will...
