Free Republic

Schatten Deeply Implicated in Hwang Fraud: Witness Prosecutors say circumstantial evidence suggests that the disgraced cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk’s former collaborator Prof. Gerald Schatten was from the beginning involved in the faking of stem cell research. They said the University of Pittsburgh academic co-wrote a now discredited paper on patient-specific stem cells published last year although he knew that stem cell lines supposedly documented in the paper had become contaminated. The charge contradicts the U.S. university’s own investigation, which cleared Schatten of any deliberate distortions. Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office quoted a witness as saying Hwang told Schatten when they...

In February 2004, Woo--Suk Hwang made world headlines when he claimed to have cloned human embryos using a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer, and then to have derived a line of stem cells from the embryos that could be used for medical research. Enthusiasm for this first "successful" experiment in human cloning, published in the prestigious peer--reviewed journal Science, was tempered by the inefficiency of the process: It took 242 human eggs to get just one embryonic stem cell line.That problem seemed solved when, last May, Hwang published another article in Science asserting that he had again successfully...

Top cloning experts gather in South Korea for clandestine testTop cloning experts from Britain, South Korea and the United States working on ways to use stem cells to treat incurable diseases gathered here to kick-off a week-long secret experiment.The scientists were led by South Korea's Hwang Woo-Suk, Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and the creator of the cloned sheep Dolly, Professor Ian Wilmut of Scotland's Roslin Institute.They would not say what the experiment would be about, but said it was expected to be over early next week.Schatten however told journalists it would be a scientific...