Starker_Kull writes "Today, the first scientist to clone human egg cells, Dr. Hwang Woo-suk, was forced to resign from his post for 'breaches of ethics'. It appears that the ethical breaches consisted of overzealous assistants who volunteered their own eggs for use. After Dr. Hwang declined the offer, the assistants secretly donated their eggs under false names. After Dr. Hwang discovered the deception, he tried to cover it up to protect his researchers - but the news eventually leaked out."
I am not a scientist, so I'm not sure, but I think the fact that they used false names brings the ethics of the researchers into some disrepute. The chap tried to cover it up to protect their reputations, and in doing so brought himself into disrepute. Its a horrible little circle:(
Any relation between an employer and employee is a minefield, but in this case ethics demands that the eggs were donated voluntarily. That can be easily doubted in the case of subordinates in a strict hierarchy.
And, IMHO, it should be, but that's (as I said) my opinion.
The ability to coerce subordinates into giving time, money, or even body parts is high in the scientific research fields because there are so few good quality job openings and much pressure to produce results. Therefore the need to establish an ethical boundary against having lab workers or other subordinates contribute anything but paid (often, but not always) labor to the project.
However, this happened in Korea where there is overwhelming pressure on people (applied since they are born) to self-sacrifice and give more and more to a group cause. There is also enormous pressure to serve without question the next higher figure in the chain of authority. The director of the project was most likely right in claiming that there was no pressure to actually placed or implied on the lab workers to give up their body parts. However the social pressure was overwhelming, and all the director had to do was mention that 'donors' were needed and the lab workers would comply.
This is the type of situation that the ethical guideline was established to prevent. The director would have realized that his subordinants would have delivered the eggs and should have taken stronger measures to prevent this from happening. However, given the cultural context, it is unlikely that the director felt that he should abide by the ethical constricture.
Sort of like American rock star mentioning that he enjoys fellatio to couple of backstage groupies. No pressure, no insinuations, but the need is serviced without question.
It is confusing to call this an ethical problem, because it has absolutely NOTHING to do with ethics, but only with so-called "professional ethics".
There is nothing whatsoever ethically wrong with using eggs from your teammates. But it does violate some code of conduct that people somewhere made up. This is a technical mistake that absolutely should not make man ashamed.
The guy who stirred everything and made the noise about this issue (Gerald Schatten) is scum and a moron. It is he who should resign and kill himself, not professor Woo-suk.
I'm sure the reason the general public is concerned is that it seems like a "breach of ethics" or as we say in the rural US, it "ain't raight". However, I think the reason it created waves in the scientific community is that researchers are expected to remain as distant as possible from their experiments as possible, in an effort to keep their observations as objective as possible. You can't do good science if your personal emotions and ego are wrapped up too tightly with the experiment.
Whoah! That would rule out just about any scientist. Or anybody else doing any kind of work they care about.
I guess there's still a difference between a scientist doing research that he cares about (most of us do) and a biologist working with a cell culture that is technically his or her daughter.
But what exactly was unethical about lab workers also being donors in the first place?
The line between voluntary and reluctant donation is very vague because it can be assumed that lab workers can easily be put under pressure to donate their eggs. Afterwards it is hard to prove that they did it (in)voluntarily. To avoid this discussion their genetic material should not be used alltogether.
The line between voluntary and reluctant donation is very
vague because it can be assumed that lab workers can easily
be put under pressure
I hate to break it to you, but outside the hard physical
sciences, at least 90% of research involves freshmen
and sophmores (and mostly female at that) "pressured" into
"volunteering", usually for a significant part of their
grade in an "intro to experimental methodology" (or
comparable) class.
The problem here involves pure and unadulterated
BS politics. The professor "lied" to protect his staff,
the info got out anyway, so his affiliation panicked over
the nature of his work and requested he take a hike. Nothing
more, nothing less.
And the real pity here? Not just his career - He'll get
another non-research academic job within a few years. No,
instead, we should feel bad about the invalidation of
his findings just because of a combination of unfortunate
circumstances, with his area of study not the least of which.
The ehtics rules are their because it's an area ripe for abuse. Junior researchers could be pressured and thus "voluntary" might not really be voluntary. As the story goes, the donations were properly refused and then given anonymously. It might seem that there was no pressure and therefore legit. Even here it's a tad dicey. First because it puts pressures for unethical behaviour on competing scientist who lack such "enthusastic" assistants. Second because the story is perhaps too pat and one could ima
The BBC article only discusses the egg donations made by his research assistants. Here [nytimes.com] are some excerpts from a longer piece in the New York Times (reg req)
which describe a different problem:
"His world reputation is now expected to suffer a major dent over his admissions that he lied to an international scientific journal over eggs obtained in what many see as an ethically murky manner. [...] Roh Sung Il, the administrator of MizMedi Hospital in Seoul, disclosed at a news conference on Monday that during 2002 and 2003, he made payments of $1,400 to each woman who donated eggs. Egg donation is an unpleasant procedure that involves a week of daily hormone shots, culminating with the extraction of eggs through a hollow needle. "For those who go through discomfort and sacrifice, it seemed natural to give some money as compensation," Dr. Roh told reporters. [...] Dr. Hwang said he had wondered why the hospital had become a regular source of eggs, while other hospitals were having difficulties. "I raised the matter, but Roh Sung Il, the administrator of MizMedi Hospital in Seoul, said that there were no problems in the procurement process and I did not raise the issue afterwards," he told reporters. After the ethical scandal flared this week, dozens of women in Dr. Hwang's Internet fan club have sent e-mail messages volunteering their eggs.
Confirming the other longstanding rumor, South Korea's Health Ministry said Thursday that an ethics investigation at Seoul National University had found that the two junior scientists had given their own eggs for research. But it said those donations had not violated ethics guidelines because they were voluntary.
As the scientists' egg donations were neither "coerced or coaxed" nor "aimed at making profit," there has been "no violation of ethics guidelines," Choi Hee Joo, a Health Ministry spokesman, told reporters before Dr. Hwang's announcement.
In May 2004, Nature raised ethical questions concerning the origin of Dr. Hwang's eggs. At the time, Dr. Hwang denied that researchers in his team had donated their own eggs to his research.
In an interview last May, he said all eggs had been harvested from volunteers without payment.
How do we know he did not know about it? In such situations you shoiuld assume the worst.
A similar example is nuclear reprocessing facility workers taking off thier RAD badges, to ensure that they can do overtime without exceeding thier safe legal dose.
When health and safety found out (as usual, via the natiaonal newspapers), the employer said that it did not notice employees in the hazmat areas without badges and because of this they were never prosecuted.
Moral of the story: ignorance is a good excuse - if you can get away with it.
But in this case Dr Hwang was unaware of this, so it does make me ask - "whats the big deal?"
He says he was unaware of it. However, Hwang also paid for the eggs- about 1,400 dollars per donor, from his own pocket- but claimed in his _Nature_ paper that the eggs were from volunteers. So he's already been caught lying about how he conducts his research, why should we believe him now?
Furthermore, at least one of the women he took eggs from was one of his graduate students. Now, as a grad student you basically depend on your advisor for everything: funding, office space, research opportunities, help with your PhD, a successful defense of your PhD, letters of recommendation for jobs and scholarships. No academic relationship is as open to abuse as the relationship between a graduate student and supervisor, because the advisor has so much power and the student, so little. Asking Jane Doe off the street for her ova is one thing- she can say "no", and what can you do about it? Asking your graduate student is another thing entirely: she knows you can do any number of things to crush her career, so she's pressured to say yes. It's a disgusting abuse of power and this creep should never work again. Sure, innocent until proven guilty and all... but the fact that he's resigning and his collaborator is rushing to distance himself is pretty telling.
Finally I find his defense pretty ludicrous. He said they went behind his back to donate eggs? That's not much of a defense, to say that you ran such a sloppy operation and did such a piss-poor job of conducting your research that you didn't even realize your own students were donating their ova. That, and it's just a little hard to swallow.
wait a second.... he gets eggs from a hospital, having never met the patients who donated eggs, and is suppose to divine who they came from? its pretty damn easy to use a false name and volunteer to do something. Most of the time, because of the need, people aren't expecting liars to come in and fool them. anyways, where did you get the idea that people were paid for their eggs? The only mention of this in teh article(and any other I have read) was that they were paid without the knowledge of the lead res
Actually, yes, I screwed up and misread the Nature article- Hwang didn't pay out of his own pocket; the fertility expert, Roh, did- $1,430 per subject (OK, so where did he get all that money from? It says 20 women, that's almost 30,000 dollars). But something just smells wrong: the first allegations of graduate students donating eggs came out in 2004, they are then retracted, and only now it turns out there was a basis to this? That sounds like a coverup, not at all like people who are eager to clear the air over some honest mistakes. And my guess is a lot of people have an interest in supporting Hwang's version of the facts, particularly if these kinds of abuses were widespread. Finally, I think if this was really just an honest mistake on his part- instead of a scandal threatening to blow sky-high- his collaborator wouldn't have moved like he did to cut ties. When the rats start jumping off the ship, you start looking for leaks. Likewise, it sounds like he's being forced to resign. That sounds like serious damage control.
if so, you probably have never done research. its way too complex especially in the medical sciences field for one person to have first hand knowledge.
I am a researcher, which is why I find his excuse so laughable. It's a fairly strict hierarchy, and if I bent the rules or got myself into an ethical tar pit like this without asking my advisor first, he'd have my head. It's not impossible that a student could pull a stunt like donating her own ova for her advisor's research without asking for permission, if he kept her on a long enough leash and didn't pay attention what she was up to. Still, (A) you'd have to be running a pretty dysfunctional lab for that to happen, so it's your own damn fault if it does (knock on wood and pray I never eat those words by having a graduate student who gets me in hot water...). (B), it would take a lot of initiative and sticking your neck out to pull a stunt like that. Maybe his lab has a different culture, but in general I find that graduate school tends to discourage serious independence and initiative, not encourage it. Like I said, you live or die according to your advisor's whims, so you're not going to do anything that might piss him off without asking permission first. Overall, I find it far more likely that an advisor pressured his student into donating eggs than that a student would provide her own eggs and lie to her advisor.
Anyway, the reason I'm pissed off is over the idea of an advisor screwing over a graduate student, because I've been there. I had a narcissitic, abusive, borderline insane advisor; a big shot who got in popular magazines and everything. I know how bad things can get- and how little you can do about it. There are some incredible, wonderful people in science, but there are also some really devious bastards.
The point isn't that the eggs were paid for (by Roh, not Hwang; I misread that part) the ethics of that are debatable, and at the time it was legal. What's sketchy is that Hwang's Nature article implies that the eggs weren't paid for. If you want to purchase eggs, go ahead and do it, but don't lie about it.
Hwang denies knowing about this part and claims he was baffled where all these eggs were coming from. I suppose it's possible he had nothing to do with this and didn't think to question his good luck... although it does raise the question of exactly who came up with the roughly $30,000 that would be needed to pay 20 women $1,430 apiece for their ova. However, at the same time you've got some of his underlings donating their ova... and he also claims to be ignorant of that as well.
If they were confident of their case they'd fire him.
Not necessarily. If he resigns he can say he's innocent and just doing it for the greater good. But firing him means that they'd have to admit that wrongdoing occurred. And that raises uncomfortable questions, like "why didn't you guys know about this stuff?", or even worse, "did you guys know about this stuff?" and "why didn't you do something about this sooner, like in 2004 when the first allegations came out?" Also, he may have some leverage. Assuming he was involved in this stuff, then I'd imagine people must have been pulling strings, bending rules, or at least looking the other way instead of asking tough questions. The agreement would probably be that they'll give him a (relatively) graceful exit and in return he will keep his mouth shut.
I mean, look at the Judith Miller saga. She was a total screwup- she cocked up the WMD story, she got too close to her sources and started becoming a mouthpiece for them instead of objectively evaluating their views, she didn't keep her editors informed of how she was involved in the Plame case... the New York Times should have thrown her out the door a long time ago. Instead, she resigned. Likewise, Jayson Blair, the guy who made up a bunch of stories in the Times? Resigned. If you really want to get rid of someone, you need to give them an easy way out or they'll fight you tooth and nail.
In public positions, such as the face (lead) of a research team, it's not just enough to be ethical. You must appear to be ethical, too. A cover-up can go either way. Receiving "donations" from those strictly under your command could be voluntary, or coerced. Appearances of being ethical are often more important than actually being ethical. Same goes for politicians, deans of universities, and teachers. Have you ever heard of a teacher spending a lot of time one-on-one with a student of the opposite s
that these researchers used their own, rather than an assitant's cells.
When this story broke, the first instance of it was that the assistant was forced. Now, we have that she donated. Which is right? Did she change the version so that she could keep her job? We will never know the truth.
I really fail to see how this is something worth resigning over. So, his assistants were a bit overzealous, and he didn't know about it until it was too late. Yes, he tried to cover it up, but did he try to fudge any of the research? Does this make his science bad in any way? Seems pretty silly to me.
Last time this story came around, it wasn't clear to me that this guy did not know his researchers had donated their eggs. If he'd been a cold bastard and put all the blame on the researchers in question as soon as he found out, he'd probably have got away with it. Instead he tried to protect them, and this is what he gets for it.
Ah well, no good deed goes unpunished, as the saying goes.
Last time this story came around, it wasn't clear to me that this guy did not know his researchers had donated their eggs. If he'd been a cold bastard and put all the blame on the researchers in question as soon as he found out, he'd probably have got away with it. Instead he tried to protect them, and this is what he gets for it.
You will never know what happened, neither will I. The only thing we know is that these eggs were used (let's assume that is true, because even that you cannot know). Everything else is hypothesis and should be treated as such.
Maybe he was to blame, maybe someone else. One way or another unethical stuff happened and the boss takes the blame.
Note that this does not necessarily mean his career is over. Just think of German scientists being adopted by the US after WWII. If this guy is really an international authority, he will be back in business in no time.
Just think of German scientists being adopted by the US after WWII. If this guy is really an international authority, he will be back in business in no time.
I hear what you're saying, although I think this a bit disingenuous... the US hired nuclear, rocket, and aviation scientists.... these were skilled professions who practiced their profession for their country; they cannot be tarred with a single 'Nazi eugenics' brush that's tacitly implied.
Now if the US hired Mengele do help develop national healt
It is his research lab, it is his responsibility that the research is correct and "above board". The buck stopped at his desk and he made the mistake of trying to cover up unethical practices rather than discarding the results.
He should have disclosed this as soon as he found out (or as soon as he confirmed it) and recanted his work on the topic. If an inquiry showed him to be above blame, he could have continued without that research. As it is, he participated in the deception, and research continues without him.
I Think your solution goes way too far. Why should he throw out the results(assuming he got the results before he found out who's egg he used)? the results are just as relevant with regards to the eggs used. to waste research like this would be like saying we should throw out all the research done by the Nazi's because about all of it went against our codes of ethics. of course we don't do that. he ought to have been a heartless bastard and fired the women and publicly ruined their careers. That way, he
So what you are saying is that there is a senior scientific position vacant where one of the perks could be described as "Research assistants keen to donate their eggs to the successful applicant".
It looks like there were some ethical violations -- where the current ethical system means no possibility of coercion (e.g. no eggs from within the team) and no payment for eggs.
Here is something [lewrockwell.com] on the ethics of donations (from some free market fans).
One thing seems obvious: if they'd had been able to easily buy eggs, it wouldn't have been a hassle: they'd never have gotten eggs from staff, and the problem would have been solved. The lack of trading in eggs prevented these guys from doing the research and complying with the ethical restrictions.
Here's a nice piece from the sadly discredited NY Times author, Martin Finkel (he lied a story and got fired), talking about a Kidney market in pre-GWII Iraq [mit.edu].
I think the good Dr has been a rather unfortunate here, by the sounds of it his researchers are entirely to blame. However he is ultimately responsible for the actions of his staff and this is why he has taken the decision to resign from his public appointments.
I wish more public figures acted with this level of integrity. We are seeing situations arise increasingly frequently where it turns out that no blame at all attaches it's self to public figures no matter what they or there staff/departments may have been engaged in and I hope the actions of this Dr can be a lesson to the next government minister who discovers his department has been acting illegally and realises that the excuse they didn't really bother to keep up to date with what their department was doing is not good enough.
I don't know which version is correct, but the first time I saw this story reported the relevant facts were not that assistants had surreptitiously donated eggs, but that the primary researcher himself had compelled one or more assistants to donate their eggs.
Looks like a little further digging is in order to clear this up.
That is the whole problem. Assume that the researcher forced the assistant to give eggs. Obviously, that is wrong.
But the story changed to be, that the assistant donated eggs and researcher tried to cover up. Cover-up what? That an assistant lied, or that he forced the assistant? Problem is, that now there are multi stories and impossible to know which is the truth.
The last story [slashdot.org] was submitted as "lab worker forced to donate eggs" when the WSJ article it linked said nothing at all about coercion. The submitter completely misstated the article.
Same thing is going on with this submission. The linked BBC story says nothing about Dr. Hwang being forced to resign. In fact, it sounds like he resigned voluntarily. The submitter added the "forced" and "humiliated" part himself.
It's almost as if some slashdot submitters don't like what this guy is doing and are making up whatever spin and hyperbole they can to discredit him. Shame on the editors for not reading the linked articles to check if the submission description is accurate.
From the BBC story, this sounds grossly unfair to Dr. Hwang.
According to the BBC, Dr. Hwang did not attempt to violate the policy, he did not even know about the fact that the women donated, and it is clear that he wasn't trying to circumvent the policy either. It sounds to me like he did nothing wrong.
Yes, he did lie to Nature about it, but I find his justification acceptable. While there are some ethical considerations that go into publishing a journal, Nature has no business conducting ethics investigations, and this particular aspect of the experiment had no bearing on the scientific validity of the results.
To me, this story mostly reflects poorly on Nature--attempting to pry into areas that really are none of their business--and the Korean research establishment.
Hats off to Dr. Hwang for being willing to take the blame for something he didn't do. I suspect that his motivation is to keep human cloning research going, and he knows that the media and politicans would continue a feeding frenzy over this as long as he stays in his job.
While there are some ethical considerations that go into publishing a journal, Nature has no business conducting ethics investigations, and this particular aspect of the experiment had no bearing on the scientific validity of the results.
That human research subjects are properly consented is a crucial piece of any research on them. It's absolutely Nature's business, in this case, and they deserve credit for enforcing proper standards.
At any rate, these "Korean Stem Cell Triumph" papers all seem to have som
I'm puzzled over something. How, exactly, does a woman donate an egg without anyone else knowing about it?
Sperm donations are easy to figure out (I'll leave the visuals to the reader's deranged imagination). But women? Unless I'm sorely mistaken, the extraction of a viable egg is a surgical procedure, and no matter how good Waldos have gotten over the years, I haven't heard of one sophisticated enough yet to allow a woman to perform that procedure on herself. So the question is, who performed the procedure, and who assisted?
"Three can keep a secret if two are dead." So goes the cliche. It's been proven accurate with this minor scandal. Unfortunately for the researcher, the gory details got out before he was able to either bring them forward himself or develop a solid-enough cover. But rather than looking to the surreptitious donors, I'd be looking for whoever did the egg extractions, and asking why they outed the mess. No publication credit? Money? Personality clash? Something I haven't thought of?
We now return to our regularly-scheduled slashdotting intellectual discussion, already in progress...
That the provenance of the donated eggs is questionable OBVIOUSLY invalidates all the rest of his research! Guess there's STILL no human cloning after all, huh? And good thing too!
/sarcast
I mean, seriously. Am I alone in thinking that this sounds MORE like the morality police casting about desperately for a reason to discredit the man and his work?
Media talk about ethics in research, etc. but completely hide the main point: Cloning of human embryos. This is unethical but they try to do it, not only Korea but in the US too.
What's so unethical about it? It's not like human life is precious or anything. It is THE cheapest thing on planet Earth.
Cloning is not so much unethical as completely useless. Nature developed sexual reproduction as a superior alternative to cloning billions of years ago, but some scientist wants to turn back the clock so he can ru
i guess we can safely say he has got... (Score:5, Funny)
sorry, but i will be here all week.
I for one ... (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry.
Re:I for one ... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Maybe I'm confused ... (Score:5, Insightful)
~Rebecca
Re:Maybe I'm confused ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Maybe I'm confused ... (Score:5, Insightful)
And, IMHO, it should be, but that's (as I said) my opinion.
Parent
Voluntary? Probably...in a Korean context (Score:5, Informative)
However, this happened in Korea where there is overwhelming pressure on people (applied since they are born) to self-sacrifice and give more and more to a group cause. There is also enormous pressure to serve without question the next higher figure in the chain of authority.
The director of the project was most likely right in claiming that there was no pressure to actually placed or implied on the lab workers to give up their body parts. However the social pressure was overwhelming, and all the director had to do was mention that 'donors' were needed and the lab workers would comply.
This is the type of situation that the ethical guideline was established to prevent. The director would have realized that his subordinants would have delivered the eggs and should have taken stronger measures to prevent this from happening. However, given the cultural context, it is unlikely that the director felt that he should abide by the ethical constricture.
Sort of like American rock star mentioning that he enjoys fellatio to couple of backstage groupies. No pressure, no insinuations, but the need is serviced without question.
Parent
Re:Maybe I'm confused ... (Score:4, Insightful)
There is nothing whatsoever ethically wrong with using eggs from your teammates. But it does violate some code of conduct that people somewhere made up. This is a technical mistake that absolutely should not make man ashamed.
The guy who stirred everything and made the noise about this issue (Gerald Schatten) is scum and a moron. It is he who should resign and kill himself, not professor Woo-suk.
Parent
Re:Maybe I'm confused ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Maybe I'm confused ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoah! That would rule out just about any scientist. Or anybody else doing any kind of work they care about.
Which leaves the work for dispassionate drones and the mediocre, I suppose.
Parent
Re:Maybe I'm confused ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Maybe I'm confused ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The line between voluntary and reluctant donation is very vague because it can be assumed that lab workers can easily be put under pressure to donate their eggs. Afterwards it is hard to prove that they did it (in)voluntarily. To avoid this discussion their genetic material should not be used alltogether.
Parent
Re:Maybe I'm confused ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to break it to you, but outside the hard physical sciences, at least 90% of research involves freshmen and sophmores (and mostly female at that) "pressured" into "volunteering", usually for a significant part of their grade in an "intro to experimental methodology" (or comparable) class.
The problem here involves pure and unadulterated BS politics. The professor "lied" to protect his staff, the info got out anyway, so his affiliation panicked over the nature of his work and requested he take a hike. Nothing more, nothing less.
And the real pity here? Not just his career - He'll get another non-research academic job within a few years. No, instead, we should feel bad about the invalidation of his findings just because of a combination of unfortunate circumstances, with his area of study not the least of which.
Parent
Good question, consider craig ventnor (Score:3, Informative)
The BBC article is incomplete (Score:4, Informative)
The BBC article only discusses the egg donations made by his research assistants. Here [nytimes.com] are some excerpts from a longer piece in the New York Times (reg req) which describe a different problem:
"His world reputation is now expected to suffer a major dent over his admissions that he lied to an international scientific journal over eggs obtained in what many see as an ethically murky manner. [...] Roh Sung Il, the administrator of MizMedi Hospital in Seoul, disclosed at a news conference on Monday that during 2002 and 2003, he made payments of $1,400 to each woman who donated eggs. Egg donation is an unpleasant procedure that involves a week of daily hormone shots, culminating with the extraction of eggs through a hollow needle. "For those who go through discomfort and sacrifice, it seemed natural to give some money as compensation," Dr. Roh told reporters. [...] Dr. Hwang said he had wondered why the hospital had become a regular source of eggs, while other hospitals were having difficulties. "I raised the matter, but Roh Sung Il, the administrator of MizMedi Hospital in Seoul, said that there were no problems in the procurement process and I did not raise the issue afterwards," he told reporters. After the ethical scandal flared this week, dozens of women in Dr. Hwang's Internet fan club have sent e-mail messages volunteering their eggs.
Confirming the other longstanding rumor, South Korea's Health Ministry said Thursday that an ethics investigation at Seoul National University had found that the two junior scientists had given their own eggs for research. But it said those donations had not violated ethics guidelines because they were voluntary.
As the scientists' egg donations were neither "coerced or coaxed" nor "aimed at making profit," there has been "no violation of ethics guidelines," Choi Hee Joo, a Health Ministry spokesman, told reporters before Dr. Hwang's announcement.
In May 2004, Nature raised ethical questions concerning the origin of Dr. Hwang's eggs. At the time, Dr. Hwang denied that researchers in his team had donated their own eggs to his research.
In an interview last May, he said all eggs had been harvested from volunteers without payment.
Parent
Re:Maybe I'm confused ... (Score:5, Insightful)
How do we know he did not know about it? In such
situations you shoiuld assume the worst.
A similar example is nuclear reprocessing facility workers
taking off thier RAD badges, to ensure that they can
do overtime without exceeding thier safe legal dose.
When health and safety found out (as usual, via the
natiaonal newspapers), the employer said that it did not
notice employees in the hazmat areas without badges and
because of this they were never prosecuted.
Moral of the story: ignorance is a good excuse - if you
can get away with it.
Parent
Re:Maybe I'm confused ... [OT] (Score:5, Funny)
whenever I see
a post like this
with very short lines,
it reminds me of bad
poetry
or perhaps,
the halting speech patterns
of William
Shatner
or Donald
Rumsfeld
Parent
Re:Maybe I'm confused ... (Score:5, Insightful)
He says he was unaware of it. However, Hwang also paid for the eggs- about 1,400 dollars per donor, from his own pocket- but claimed in his _Nature_ paper that the eggs were from volunteers. So he's already been caught lying about how he conducts his research, why should we believe him now?
Furthermore, at least one of the women he took eggs from was one of his graduate students. Now, as a grad student you basically depend on your advisor for everything: funding, office space, research opportunities, help with your PhD, a successful defense of your PhD, letters of recommendation for jobs and scholarships. No academic relationship is as open to abuse as the relationship between a graduate student and supervisor, because the advisor has so much power and the student, so little. Asking Jane Doe off the street for her ova is one thing- she can say "no", and what can you do about it? Asking your graduate student is another thing entirely: she knows you can do any number of things to crush her career, so she's pressured to say yes. It's a disgusting abuse of power and this creep should never work again. Sure, innocent until proven guilty and all... but the fact that he's resigning and his collaborator is rushing to distance himself is pretty telling.
Finally I find his defense pretty ludicrous. He said they went behind his back to donate eggs? That's not much of a defense, to say that you ran such a sloppy operation and did such a piss-poor job of conducting your research that you didn't even realize your own students were donating their ova. That, and it's just a little hard to swallow.
Parent
Re:Maybe I'm confused ... (Score:3, Insightful)
anyways, where did you get the idea that people were paid for their eggs? The only mention of this in teh article(and any other I have read) was that they were paid without the knowledge of the lead res
Re:Maybe I'm confused ... (Score:4, Interesting)
if so, you probably have never done research. its way too complex especially in the medical sciences field for one person to have first hand knowledge.
I am a researcher, which is why I find his excuse so laughable. It's a fairly strict hierarchy, and if I bent the rules or got myself into an ethical tar pit like this without asking my advisor first, he'd have my head. It's not impossible that a student could pull a stunt like donating her own ova for her advisor's research without asking for permission, if he kept her on a long enough leash and didn't pay attention what she was up to. Still, (A) you'd have to be running a pretty dysfunctional lab for that to happen, so it's your own damn fault if it does (knock on wood and pray I never eat those words by having a graduate student who gets me in hot water...). (B), it would take a lot of initiative and sticking your neck out to pull a stunt like that. Maybe his lab has a different culture, but in general I find that graduate school tends to discourage serious independence and initiative, not encourage it. Like I said, you live or die according to your advisor's whims, so you're not going to do anything that might piss him off without asking permission first. Overall, I find it far more likely that an advisor pressured his student into donating eggs than that a student would provide her own eggs and lie to her advisor.
Anyway, the reason I'm pissed off is over the idea of an advisor screwing over a graduate student, because I've been there. I had a narcissitic, abusive, borderline insane advisor; a big shot who got in popular magazines and everything. I know how bad things can get- and how little you can do about it. There are some incredible, wonderful people in science, but there are also some really devious bastards.
Parent
Re:Maybe I'm confused ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hwang denies knowing about this part and claims he was baffled where all these eggs were coming from. I suppose it's possible he had nothing to do with this and didn't think to question his good luck... although it does raise the question of exactly who came up with the roughly $30,000 that would be needed to pay 20 women $1,430 apiece for their ova. However, at the same time you've got some of his underlings donating their ova... and he also claims to be ignorant of that as well.
If they were confident of their case they'd fire him.
Not necessarily. If he resigns he can say he's innocent and just doing it for the greater good. But firing him means that they'd have to admit that wrongdoing occurred. And that raises uncomfortable questions, like "why didn't you guys know about this stuff?", or even worse, "did you guys know about this stuff?" and "why didn't you do something about this sooner, like in 2004 when the first allegations came out?" Also, he may have some leverage. Assuming he was involved in this stuff, then I'd imagine people must have been pulling strings, bending rules, or at least looking the other way instead of asking tough questions. The agreement would probably be that they'll give him a (relatively) graceful exit and in return he will keep his mouth shut.
I mean, look at the Judith Miller saga. She was a total screwup- she cocked up the WMD story, she got too close to her sources and started becoming a mouthpiece for them instead of objectively evaluating their views, she didn't keep her editors informed of how she was involved in the Plame case... the New York Times should have thrown her out the door a long time ago. Instead, she resigned. Likewise, Jayson Blair, the guy who made up a bunch of stories in the Times? Resigned. If you really want to get rid of someone, you need to give them an easy way out or they'll fight you tooth and nail.
Parent
Re:Maybe I'm confused ... (Score:3, Insightful)
In public positions, such as the face (lead) of a research team, it's not just enough to be ethical. You must appear to be ethical, too. A cover-up can go either way. Receiving "donations" from those strictly under your command could be voluntary, or coerced. Appearances of being ethical are often more important than actually being ethical. Same goes for politicians, deans of universities, and teachers. Have you ever heard of a teacher spending a lot of time one-on-one with a student of the opposite s
The difference being... (Score:5, Insightful)
When this story broke, the first instance of it was that the assistant was forced. Now, we have that she donated. Which is right? Did she change the version so that she could keep her job? We will never know the truth.
Parent
But surely... (Score:3, Funny)
Surely, you're eggzagerating. (Score:3, Funny)
You hate puns and I should stop calling you Surely.
Re:But surely... (Score:3, Funny)
Or not, of course (Score:3, Insightful)
It's Not Over... (Score:5, Funny)
Resigned? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah well, no good deed goes unpunished, as the saying goes.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
You will never know what happened, neither will I. The only thing we know is that these eggs were used (let's assume that is true, because even that you cannot know). Everything else is hypothesis and should be treated as such.
Maybe he was to blame, maybe someone else. One way or another unethical stuff happened and the boss takes the blame. Note that this does not necessarily mean his career is over. Just think of German scientists being adopted by the US after WWII. If this guy is really an international authority, he will be back in business in no time.
Parent
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
I hear what you're saying, although I think this a bit disingenuous... the US hired nuclear, rocket, and aviation scientists.... these were skilled professions who practiced their profession for their country; they cannot be tarred with a single 'Nazi eugenics' brush that's tacitly implied.
Now if the US hired Mengele do help develop national healt
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
he ought to have been a heartless bastard and fired the women and publicly ruined their careers. That way, he
Vacancy (Score:5, Funny)
Please form an orderly line... behind me.
They paid for eggs (and they were from the team) (Score:4, Interesting)
Here is something [lewrockwell.com] on the ethics of donations (from some free market fans).
One thing seems obvious: if they'd had been able to easily buy eggs, it wouldn't have been a hassle: they'd never have gotten eggs from staff, and the problem would have been solved. The lack of trading in eggs prevented these guys from doing the research and complying with the ethical restrictions.
Here's a nice piece from the sadly discredited NY Times author, Martin Finkel (he lied a story and got fired), talking about a Kidney market in pre-GWII Iraq [mit.edu].
Bad Staff (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish more public figures acted with this level of integrity. We are seeing situations arise increasingly frequently where it turns out that no blame at all attaches it's self to public figures no matter what they or there staff/departments may have been engaged in and I hope the actions of this Dr can be a lesson to the next government minister who discovers his department has been acting illegally and realises that the excuse they didn't really bother to keep up to date with what their department was doing is not good enough.
Revisionist? (Score:4, Informative)
Looks like a little further digging is in order to clear this up.
Re:Revisionist? (Score:3, Insightful)
But the story changed to be, that the assistant donated eggs and researcher tried to cover up. Cover-up what? That an assistant lied, or that he forced the assistant? Problem is, that now there are multi stories and impossible to know which is the truth.
In science and education, veracity is everything.
It was slashdot submitter's spin (Score:5, Informative)
Same thing is going on with this submission. The linked BBC story says nothing about Dr. Hwang being forced to resign. In fact, it sounds like he resigned voluntarily. The submitter added the "forced" and "humiliated" part himself.
It's almost as if some slashdot submitters don't like what this guy is doing and are making up whatever spin and hyperbole they can to discredit him. Shame on the editors for not reading the linked articles to check if the submission description is accurate.
Parent
unfair (Score:4, Insightful)
According to the BBC, Dr. Hwang did not attempt to violate the policy, he did not even know about the fact that the women donated, and it is clear that he wasn't trying to circumvent the policy either. It sounds to me like he did nothing wrong.
Yes, he did lie to Nature about it, but I find his justification acceptable. While there are some ethical considerations that go into publishing a journal, Nature has no business conducting ethics investigations, and this particular aspect of the experiment had no bearing on the scientific validity of the results.
To me, this story mostly reflects poorly on Nature--attempting to pry into areas that really are none of their business--and the Korean research establishment.
Hats off to Dr. Hwang for being willing to take the blame for something he didn't do. I suspect that his motivation is to keep human cloning research going, and he knows that the media and politicans would continue a feeding frenzy over this as long as he stays in his job.
Re:unfair (Score:3, Insightful)
That human research subjects are properly consented is a crucial piece of any research on them. It's absolutely Nature's business, in this case, and they deserve credit for enforcing proper standards.
At any rate, these "Korean Stem Cell Triumph" papers all seem to have som
Non-PC Fun for English Speakers (Score:3, Funny)
Woo-Suk, Hwang
Adding insult to injury ...
One thing still needs to be cleared up (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm puzzled over something. How, exactly, does a woman donate an egg without anyone else knowing about it?
Sperm donations are easy to figure out (I'll leave the visuals to the reader's deranged imagination). But women? Unless I'm sorely mistaken, the extraction of a viable egg is a surgical procedure, and no matter how good Waldos have gotten over the years, I haven't heard of one sophisticated enough yet to allow a woman to perform that procedure on herself. So the question is, who performed the procedure, and who assisted?
"Three can keep a secret if two are dead." So goes the cliche. It's been proven accurate with this minor scandal. Unfortunately for the researcher, the gory details got out before he was able to either bring them forward himself or develop a solid-enough cover. But rather than looking to the surreptitious donors, I'd be looking for whoever did the egg extractions, and asking why they outed the mess. No publication credit? Money? Personality clash? Something I haven't thought of?
We now return to our regularly-scheduled slashdotting intellectual discussion, already in progress...
She did such good work.. (Score:4, Funny)
Oh yes... (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, seriously. Am I alone in thinking that this sounds MORE like the morality police casting about desperately for a reason to discredit the man and his work?
Great now we have a mad scientist... (Score:5, Funny)
Next article is going to be "Humiliated cloning experts buys thousands of linen suits, panama hats, and a cane then moves to small tropical island."
Great....
Re:A line of crapola if ever you heard one... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:What exactly is the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Why the Fuss? (Score:3, Insightful)
What's so unethical about it? It's not like human life is precious or anything. It is THE cheapest thing on planet Earth.
Cloning is not so much unethical as completely useless. Nature developed sexual reproduction as a superior alternative to cloning billions of years ago, but some scientist wants to turn back the clock so he can ru