Direct from Al Jazeera, where we get most of our ethics articles, a full text version of the conclusions that were reached about Hwang Woo suk. None are surprising but some are new.
The 2004 Science article is a tissue of lies:
The claim in 2004 article that the DNA fingerprinting pattern of NT-1 and that of the donor A match perfectly was a clear false report. Given that none of the alleged NT-1 derived cells or tissues match the donor A, the committee concluded that NT-1 ES cell line reported in Science in 2004 is not an ES cell line derived from a cloned blastocyst. In addition, claims that photographs of cells in 2004 Science article are those of MizMedi ES cells have also been confirmed to be true. Therefore, the committee concluded that results described in 2004 Science article including DNA fingerprinting analyses and photographs of cells have also been fabricated.
The dog is really a clone.
Egg donation ethics? Try this on:
Professor Hwang accompanied the student [who donating eggs, about which Hwang earlier claimed he had no idea] to the hospital himself. In May of 2003, Professor Hwang’s research team circulated a form asking consent for voluntary egg donation and collected signature from female technicians. This is based on information provided by eight current and former lab members.
The committee takes it upon itself to proclaim that thanks to Hwang, “when it comes to animal cloning, with the added consideration for the successful cloning of a dog, Korea seems to be internationally competitive.”
And there is the simple, clear statement by the committee as to the total nature of the fabrication, i.e., almost everything was utterly made up:
According to the records of Professor Hwang’s research team regarding the stage of cell line establishment, the scientific bases for claiming any success are wholly lacking. The establishment of ES cell lines must meet the criteria of being able to differentiate through embryoid body formation or to form teratoma, for example. However, Professor Hwang’s team regarded the initial formation of cell colony as the successful establishment of ES cell line, and no record of further confirmatory experiments could be found.
Taken together, Professor Hwang’s research team possesses neither the patient-specific ES cell line described in 2005 publication nor the NT-1 ES cell line, the forerunner cloned cell line described in 2004 publication. The data in 2004 publication are also fabricated as can be seen by the non-match between the donor A and NT-1. Such act is none other than deceiving the scientific community and the public at large. Even the scenario based on switching cell lines cannot explain the parthenogenetically derived cell line and cannot undo the fabrication of DNA fingerprinting data.
And with that, hopefully, the Hwang matter will cease to be a font of unending insanity and become a cautionary tale about frontier science and its regulation.