Art and David opine in the San Jose Mercury News:
The news about the South Korean team involved in announcing the world’s first successful generation of stem cells from cloned human embryos has gone from bad to worse to, well, awful.
Last year the South Korean team and its lead researcher, veterinarian Hwang Woo Suk, were at the top of the scientific world. In February they published a paper in the journal Science announcing the world’s first human embryo cloning. The South Korean group, working with Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh, reported cloning 30 human embryos. The paper went on to say that stem cells had been successfully extracted from the cloned embryos that were genetically matched to specific people with various diseases.
Hwang became a huge celebrity in South Korea. The government poured money into his lab. The South Korean government was so excited that the nation had the lead in this promising area of medical research that it announced this past August that it was investing significant funds to create a world stem-cell hub under Hwang’s direction that would supply stem cells from cloned embryos to researchers worldwide.
Now Hwang is in a hospital being treated for extreme stress. He has acknowledged lying about where he got the eggs used in his research, both to the public and to the journal that published his work. His key American collaborator wants nothing to do with him. One of Hwang’s closest colleagues says key data reported in the Science paper was fraudulent. Hwang is denying these claims, but further investigations into irregularities are under way.
Predictably, opponents of stem-cell research are delighted by Hwang’s disgrace. Richard Doerflinger, deputy director of the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, burst into print to hyperventilate that “the fact is that the entire propaganda campaign for research cloning has been filled with misrepresentations, hype and outright lies.”
When the issue is embryos, Doerflinger and other critics of stem-cell research are quick to forget about the merits of the science or the needs of the sick and to use the Korean scandal to impugn what their moral compass unerringly tells them must be abhorrent — seeking to take stem cells out of human embryos made from a human egg and DNA from a skin cell.
Yelling ethical fire over the Korean fiasco in a world full of people dying of incurable diseases and plagued by cruel disabilities may play in some circles, but is unlikely to fly as a guide to the real lessons to be learned from what happened in South Korea. What should be learned?
Science depends upon trust in the honesty and integrity of its practitioners, perhaps more than any other human endeavor. The peer-review process means that experts review the data and the methods that are reported but, ultimately, scientific articles are a form of testimony. Other scientists then attempt to repeat research results — so that if something is fabricated it will typically be discovered over time. But oversight committees like human experimentation committees have to trust what their investigators tell them. Journals also must rely on scientists to tell the truth to them. And researchers themselves often have to rely on the honesty of their graduate students and post-doctoral students. When trust breaks down, the very possibility of science is threatened. That is why so much time is spent these days emphasizing to young scientists the importance of integrity.
The mess in South Korea reveals the ethical problems inherent in high-pressure, high-stakes and highly competitive science. Ever since James Watson described in his book “The Double Helix” the shenanigans that he and his collaborator Francis Crick engaged in to be the first to discover the structure of DNA it has been very clear that ambition, competitiveness and the desire to be the first can lead the best biomedical researchers to engage in dubious, immoral and even fraudulent behavior.
We do not know yet if Hwang and his colleagues lied about deriving cell lines from cloned embryos, but we know they lied about how they procured the eggs, and that alone is grounds for severe censure.
Honesty and integrity are partly individual traits, but they are also a reflection of institutional culture. If we create a system where there is overwhelming pressure to succeed at all costs, we should not be surprised when corners are cut.
One of the keys to preventing future scandals with respect to stem-cell research will be creating a culture within institutions in which integrity is taught and nurtured and all participants are respected. Adequate mentorship by our scientific leaders will also be critical. Above all, training in ethical standards must be seen as central to the enterprise of science, rather than burdensome make-work.
The real lesson of the scandal in South Korea is not that embryonic stem-cell research cannot be pursued ethically but that it can only be pursued ethically. is the director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics. They wrote this article for the Mercury News.
