|
미국의 CNN은 황우석씨의
줄기세포 사기사건은 '근대 과학사상 최대의 조작'이라고 표현했다. 뉴욕 타임스는 이 조작사건이 그나마 한국의 언론과 젊은 과학자들에 의해 밝혀진
것은 한국 과학계의 권위가 국제적으로 실추시키는 데 있어서 다소 완충역할을 해줄 것이라고 지적했다. 이 신문은 또 한국정부가 6500만 달러나
사기당하면서 황씨를 국가적 영웅으로 만들어줌으로써 큰 낭패를 당했다고 보도했다.
----------------------------------------------------------
SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- A panel
investigating the work of disgraced South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk has
found that he faked claims of cloning human embryonic stem cells, in what could
be the biggest cover-up in modern scientific
history.
---------------------------------------------------------
Researcher
Faked Evidence of Human Cloning, Koreans Report
By NICHOLAS
WADE and CHOE SANG-HUN(NYT)
Published: January 10,
2006
Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, the South Korean researcher who
claimed to have cloned human cells, fabricated evidence for all of that
research, according to a report released today by a Seoul National University
panel investigating his work.
Chung Myunghee, the head of
Seoul National University's investigatory panel, spoke to reporters in Seoul
about the findings.
The finding strips any possibility of legitimate
achievement in human cell cloning from a researcher who had been propelled to
international celebrity and whose promise to make paralyzed people walk had been
engraved on a Korean postage stamp.
In his string of splashy
papers, his one legitimate claim was to have cloned the dog he named Snuppy, the
panel said.
"Dr. Hwang's team cannot avoid taking grave
responsibility for fabricating its papers and concealing data," said Chung
Myunghee, the head of the university's investigatory
panel.
Last month the panel said there was no evidence to
support Dr. Hwang's claim in June 2005 to have cloned cells from 11 patients
with an efficient new technique using very few human
eggs.
But that still left open the possibility that he had
gotten the cloning technique to work to some degree, as he wrote in the report
first announcing his success in an earlier article in March 2004. The panel
found that the 2004 article was also fabricated.
Dr. Hwang's
professional demise is a severe embarrassment for the Korean government, which
invested some $65 million in his laboratory and in making him a national hero.
But the blow to Korea's scientific reputation abroad may be cushioned by the
fact that other Korean institutions, notably the television program "PD
Notebook" and a group of skeptical young Korean scientists, took the lead in
discovering the problems with Dr. Hwang's work and in eventually forcing the
investigation by the university.
Dr. Hwang still has public
support. Last night 150 people festooned trees and shrubs at the gate of Seoul
National University with strips of yellow, blue and green cloth. Banners that
were hung between the trees showed the Korean flag and slogans such as "The
Pride of Korea" or "Biotechnology is Our Future."
Korean
prosecutors, however, have barred Dr. Hwang and nine other South Korean
scientists from leaving the country. They have said they will launch an
investigation as soon as the university panel announced its
findings.
The Seoul panel said Dr. Hwang had accomplished
only the first steps toward creating embryonic stem cell lines from people, and
had failed to create any successful line, despite the many resources at his
disposal. Those included skilled technicians and a bountiful supply of human
eggs - as many as 2,061 eggs from 129 women, an extraordinary number, given the
pain and difficulty of extracting eggs from their donors.
The
cell colony he presented in his 2004 report as being derived from a person was
in fact a human egg, induced to develop by parthenogenesis, also known
informally as virgin birth because no sperm is used. With humans, however, such
eggs do not develop very far.
The panel criticized Dr. Hwang
for fabricating data and said his "scandalous case" would be a learning
experience for Korean science. "The young scientists who courageously pointed
out the fallacy and precipitated the initiation of this investigation are our
hope for the future," the panel said.
As for the field of
embryonic stem cells, researchers in the United States say it should not be much
affected in the long run, at least on a scientific level, since its theoretical
promise is unchanged by one man's misdeeds.
In practical
terms, however, the panel's new finding is a sharp setback for therapeutic
cloning, the much discussed goal of converting a patient's own cells into new
tissue to treat a wide variety of degenerative diseases from diabetes to heart
disease. The technique for cloning human cells, which seemed to have been
achieved since March 2004, now turns out not to exist at all, forcing cloning
researchers back to square one.
The Seoul panel's finding
also raises the question of how an important but fabricated result could survive
unchallenged, in a presumably rigorous and competitive scientific field, for
almost two years.
|
