Reading about the intense pride the Japanese public and government had in the discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells by a Japanese researcher reminded me of another scientist who became a national hero through his work in stem cell research. His story, however, doesn't end in a Nobel Prize, but in embarrassment and disgrace, and is a nice complement to our discussions on ethics in research.
If you've been following medical research in recent years, you know who I'm talking about. Dr. Hwang Woo-Suk was a Korean researcher made world famous by his apparent cloning of human embryonic stem cells - a feat previously (and now again) considered near impossible. He managed to have not one, but two papers published in the premier academic journal, Science. The South Korean government issued stamps with his face on them. However, it soon came to light that his data - and the papers based on them - had been fabricated. Not only that, he had violated research ethics by obtaining some of the embryos used in his research from his own researchers and also paying egg donors for their oocytes. He was promptly fired, and his two Science papers were withdrawn by the journal.
What's interesting about Dr. Hwang Woo-Suk is that his aptitude for cloning isn't just fictional. In 2005, after he had published his falsified stem cell data but before his misconduct had been brought to light, he led a team of scientists in the creation of the first cloned dog, Snuppy. TIME magazine named Snuppy as 2005's most amazing invention. Dr. Hwang Woo-Suk has also repeatedly insisted that he has the capacity to achieve what he claimed, but was undermined by other members of his project giving him false data. He might be able to back that claim up yet, as his disgrace hasn't stopped him from continuing his stem cell cloning work elsewhere. Most recently, he has claimed to have managed to clone pig stem cells.
Sources: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/12/25/8396782/index.htm
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/genetics/2006-01-02-stem-cell-govt_x.htm
It is pretty clear that Dr. Hwang Woo-Suk is brilliant. However, I think his story illustrates his tragic flaw: hubris. As Thompson mentioned (in the article “Asian Regeneration?”), his lab worked very hard to keep up experiences, even to the point of taking unnecessary measures to prevent contamination so that the lab would appear very professional and extremely futuristic, and the labs successes became very important to his country's national image. As such, the quest to clone humans stem cells became less about science and more about pride and politics. This combination prevents good science, and leads to mistakes like the ones Dr. Woo-Suk made.
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