Cloning idol 'a fake'

2005-12-23 08:22

Seoul - South Korean investigators said on Friday that the apparently landmark research into stem cells by cloning expert Hwang Woo-Suk had been faked, turning the one-time national hero into a disgraced fabricator.

Hwang Woo-Suk apologised on Friday and resigned after the findings were made public.

"I sincerely apologise to the people for creating a shock and disappointment," Hwang told reporters as he was leaving his office at Seoul National University.

"As a symbol of apology, I step down as professor of Seoul National University."

However, Hwang maintained that he had still created the technology to create patient-matched stem cells as he claimed to do in a May article in the journal Science, which had raised hopes of creating tailored therapies for hard-to-treat diseases.

A nine-member investigation committee from Hwang's Seoul National University said his 2005 paper published in Science journal contained false data that was not merely the results of "simple mistakes" but of "intentional fabrication".

"The data of the 2005 paper were not the result of simple mistakes but of an intentional fabrication," the committee said in a statement, going public with the results of a week-long probe.

"This is a serious wrongdoing that has damaged the foundation of science," it said.

At a press conference last week, Hwang withdrew the paper, saying that there were "mistakes" in the study including the photos.

But he insisted that the fundamental scientific aspects of his paper were correct and that he had cloned 11 human embryos and cultivated patient-specific stem cell lines from them.

Hwang to be disciplined

The committee however said Hwang had manipulated data and photographs of two stem cell lines to make it appear as if his team had cultivated 11 stem cell lines.

The veracity of the two stem cells themselves has yet to be verified pending the outcome of the ongoing DNA analysis of the cell lines which were supposed to be "therapeutic" patient-specific cells.

"Professor Hwang admitted to having played a role in extending the data of the two stem cell lines to those of 11 stem cells," committee spokesperson Roh Jung-Hye told journalists.

"It is inevitable for Professor Hwang to be disciplined in light of the evidences of fabrication that have so far been revealed," she said.

Hwang was idolised as a national hero until TV network MBC and young scientists publicly accused him of fabricating key parts of his research into the production of patient-specific stem cells.

The government had showered Hwang with honours and research funds. Since 2002 the Science and Technology Ministry alone had given him some $40m.

But Hwang's reputation began to crumble domestically when a key co-author of the paper, Roh Sung-Il, said last week that pictures accompanying the article and purporting to show 11 patient-specific stem cell lines had been faked.

Roh Sung-Il said the patient-specific stem cell colonies had never existed.

One of three unidentified former colleagues of Hwang, whose tip-off to MBC of the fabrication sparked the scandal, told the TV network that Hwang had been suffering from an obsession that he must come up with quick research results.

- AFP