Posted on 08/05/2007 9:02:03 PM PDT by neverdem
The world of stem cell research was set reeling two years ago when its most successful practitioner, the Korean scientist Hwang Woo Suk, was found to have fabricated much of his work. But according to a new post-mortem of his research, he did achieve a scientific first, though not the one he claimed.
Dr. Hwang said he had derived embryonic stem cells from the adult cells of a patient, but the claim was discredited after parts of his research were found to have been faked. A team of Boston scientists has now re-examined stocks of Dr. Hwang’s purported embryonic stem cells and arrived at a surprising conclusion: His embryonic stem cells were the product of parthenogenesis, or virgin birth, meaning they were derived from an unfertilized egg.
A team led by Kitai Kim and George Q. Daley of Children’s Hospital Boston reports this conclusion today in the journal Cell Stem Cell.
Embryonic stem cells derived through parthenogenesis cannot develop normally, so they are free of ethical objections. The cells could perhaps help treat degenerative diseases in women capable of supplying eggs, should effective treatments ever be developed.
Other researchers have since developed embryonic stem cells from parthenogenetic eggs, but Dr. Hwang’s team would have been the first to do so had its members recognized what they had done.
“It could have been a seminal finding if they hadn’t had their blinders on,” said Kent E. Vrana, an expert on parthenogenesis at Pennsylvania State University.
John D. Gearhart, a stem cell expert at Johns Hopkins University who had a ringside view of the Hwang affair as a member of the journal Science’s advisory board, said parthenogenesis had always been a possibility.
“I’m delighted there was an explanation that didn’t involve fraud,” Dr. Gearhart said.
Dr. Hwang soared to prominence after asserting...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
SC Ping
Fake but accurate...
I only want to know one thing: Where are the cures we were promised from stem cell research?
BTW, what's new about using parthenogenesis to create human embryos? /sarcasm
Pro-choice author James Trefil said, many years back, that simple human eggs are the same thing as parthenogenic human embryos.
...we have to agree that when the technology for parthenogenesis becomes available, it should be considered immoral to allow any unfertilized egg to go to waste. Every time a woman menstruates, a potential life has been cut off just as surely as when a zygote is killed."The Facts of Life" Harold J. Morowitz and James S. Trefil [as quoted online]
According to Trefil, women have been creating the equivalent of parthenogenic embryos for thousands of years.
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