Hwang defends tailored stem cell technology

The Korea Herald ^ | 2006.01.02

[nickcarraway]

Disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk defended himself insisting he has the technology to produce patient-specific stem cells and that he had been the victim of a "long-planned" conspiracy.

An investigation panel at Seoul National University has concluded Hwang did not produce any embryonic stem cells individually tailored to patients as claimed in a paper published in the journal Science last year.

Hwang stood by his work in an interview with a local Buddhist newspaper Saturday.

"I definitely have the source technology to produce tailored embryonic stem cells," Hwang was quoted as saying in Beopbo. "I can replicate the process any time."

He repeated his claim that the laboratory samples found to have been falsified must have been switched and that a state prosecutor's investigation into the claims of a sample swap would reveal the truth "within a couple of days."

Hwang has filed a complaint with prosecutors that some of the stem cell lines his team created were replaced by those made at MizMedi.

"The replacement took place under a detailed plan over quite a long period of time," Hwang said, according to the newspaper.

MizMedi Hospital has denied switching the stem cell colonies.

In a related development, the U.S. journal Science will need some more time before retracting Hwang's stem cell paper published in its May issue, the New York Times said Saturday.

The journal's editor-in-chief, Donald Kennedy, had said in a statement on Thursday that the retraction could be possible as early as Saturday.

According to the New York Times, Science editors were finding it hard to set the record straight in time, because the proposed retraction did not include information newly revealed in South Korea at a news conference on Thursday.

Until then, it had seemed possible that Hwang's group had cloned two patient-specific stem cell lines, not 11 as he claimed in his 2005 Science paper. The investigators in Seoul said that even those two were not clones.

Science sought confirmation of the new reports from the investigative panel at Seoul National University where Hwang worked. The SNU panel said in its interim report that there were no patient-matched stem cells developed by Hwang when he submitted the 2005 paper.

Katrina Kelner, a deputy Science editor, was quoted Friday by the New York Times as saying, "The wording of the retraction is not correct (due to the new information from Seoul)."

Now, the journal's staff needs to meet to discuss how to proceed, she said, because "once a paper is retracted, you can't retract it again," according to the paper.

Ginger Pinholster, a Science spokesman, also said in the New York Times report that out of the 25 co-authors of Hwang's 2005 paper, all but one had signed for the retraction of the paper by Friday.

Seoul National University plans to release the final results of the investigation - including those into Hwang's earlier purported breakthroughs such as the world's first cloned human embryo and first cloned dog - in mid-January.

[GSlob]

Well, if "he can replicate the process any time", then the only honorable way for him out of the pile of [his own] excrement he finds himself in would be to replicate it, with the competent checkers [say, from Seoul University, and from few other solid places] standing over his shoulders. If he succeeds in doing that, then his reputation, or a large part of it, would be restored.

[frankjr]

"tailored stem cell technology" = "make stuff up"

[Wonder Warthog]

"Well, if "he can replicate the process any time", then the only honorable way for him out of the pile of [his own] excrement he finds himself in would be to replicate it, with the competent checkers...standing over his shoulder."

Right you are!