The latest installment of Caplan & McGee deals with the Korean egg problem and what it says about American stem cell policy:
Because there is no real federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, other nations have begun to take the lead. But the real concern isn’t that the other guys are winning, it is what happens when they bend the rules to do so.
Hwang Woo-suk is South Korea’s first superstar scientist. His team was the first to successfully make stem cells using cloned human embryos — a process often referred to as therapeutic cloning. He has been busy since his initial breakthrough.
Since creating the first cloned human embryos, he created a technique to derive stem cells five times more efficiently using far fewer donated eggs. Last April his colleague at SNU and others held a news conference at which a patient who had been treated with umbilical cord blood-based stem cells walked after having been bedridden for 19 years. Hwang is also the scientific father to the world’s second-most famous cloned animal, Snuppy the dog.
South Korea took notice of his work. The grateful Asian nation of 48 million has lavished praise, titles and money on Hwang, declaring him their first “supreme scientist.” His labs receive more support than the U.S. government has invested in all of our nation’s stem cell labs put together.
It should be no surprise then that a leading American stem cell scientist, Gerald Schatten, wanted to work with Hwang. Finding a partner overseas was a matter of survival for Schatten’s University of Pittsburgh team, because embryonic stem cell research is a third-degree felony in Pennsylvania.
An impressive work ethic prevails in South Korea. Hwang’s labs do not close — ever. He has said that all of his scientists work every day of the week. Their devotion and his success, he jokes, derives from the “chopstick theory of scientific supremacy,” by which he means that because Korean chopsticks are metal and somewhat slippery, one has to learn early to be precise. While Dr. Hwang’s work ethics may be impressive, his research ethics may be less so.
One key requirement for success in therapeutic cloning to create stem cells is raw material. Cloners need eggs. To make Snuppy the dog, Korean scientists used more than 1,000 dog eggs to create embryos which they transferred into 123 dogs to create one Snuppy.
Hwang and Schatten’s work in making human embryonic cells required an unprecedented amount of human eggs. Since the odds against any single cloned embryo working are enormous, they needed a lot of eggs to make a lot of embryos. That means that many women would need to be willing to consent to the risks of taking hormones so they would create a lot of eggs and then having them removed surgically from their ovaries. And that is where things went wrong.
Schatten announced recently that he would no longer be collaborating with Hwang. He cited new information that led him to believe that Hwang’s group had accepted eggs from a young woman who is a junior scientist in the lab. He also said he had evidence that the woman may have been paid for her eggs.
Taking eggs from an employee smacks of coercion. Paying for them smacks of bad judgment.
If Hwang’s lab knowingly violated the rights of egg donors in a rush to advance stem cell research, and then when asked about such behavior, covered it up, a lot of people will start asking whether or not stem cell researchers are a rogue lot, not to be trusted. What is the answer? Get the United States government involved in paying for and regulating embryonic stem cell research.
A clear majority of Americans favor embryonic stem cell research. Yet there are no meaningful federal funds for such research. And the administration has been growling about cloning for research ever since it took office.
As a result, our best stem cell researchers, like Professor Schatten, are going offshore to avoid prosecution or to find research funds.
This means that ethics can get forgotten as other nations and private companies race to fill the void left by the President’s reluctance to fund stem cell research.
Only a properly funded U.S. stem cell research program will guarantee oversight and the protection of all involved. Professor Hwang has gotten too powerful and the Korean government too dazzled with his work to allow him to be a sole man in Seoul.