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Science Technology

Korean Lab Worker Forced to Donate Her Own Eggs 376

An anonymous reader writes "According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Woo Suk Hwang had attained international fame by successfully cloning a human embryo, but he accomplished his feat by pressuring a lab worker into donating her own eggs. Consequently, Gerald Schatten, a cell biologist at the University of Pittsburgh, has severed his ties with Mr. Hwang and cited gross breaches of ethics."
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Korean Lab Worker Forced to Donate Her Own Eggs

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  • Forced? (Score:5, Informative)

    by whitehatlurker ( 867714 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @07:33PM (#14017773) Journal
    I don't see anything in TFA about coercion ... where did that part come from?
    • Re:Forced? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Ben Varrey ( 919558 )
      Coercion came in the same way that it would come in when a high-powered executive tells his female secretary that, for the good of the firm, she should put on some nice red lipstick and give him a messy blowjob. A woman's job should not involve her sexual organs, apparatus, or cells in any way, damn it!
      • Re:Forced? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by cheesee ( 97693 )
        What if she is a prostitute?
        • Re:Forced? (Score:5, Funny)

          by drsquare ( 530038 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @07:58PM (#14017887)
          Or a secretary?
        • Re:Forced? (Score:2, Insightful)

          by timeOday ( 582209 )
          A woman's job should not involve her sexual organs, apparatus, or cells in any way, damn it!
          What if she is a prostitute?
          That's why prostitution isn't a legitimate job.
          • Re:Forced? (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Melkman ( 82959 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @08:34PM (#14018042)
            It is here. There was even a specialized union for it "De rode draad" (the red thread). Alas this has been terminated and they can now only join one of the big multidisciplinairy unions. Gotta love the Netherlands.
          • Re:Forced? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by aussie_a ( 778472 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @09:32PM (#14018216) Journal
            A woman's job should not involve her sexual organs, apparatus, or cells in any way, damn it!
            What if she is a prostitute?

            That's why prostitution isn't a legitimate job.

            No, the reason prostitution isn't a legitimate job (in the USA anyway) is because America has a very puritan view when it comes to sex (and see's the depiction of violence to be much more acceptable then the depcition of consensual sex) and the American government loves to invade people's bedrooms.

            Don't think for one minute prostitution being illegal is because of protecting women's rights. If it was truly about that, then the government would set up standards of health, working hours, working conditions, pay, etc that people must follow if they are in the prostitution industry.
            • Prostitution is 100% legal in Nevada.
            • Re:Forced? (Score:2, Insightful)

              by Zen Punk ( 785385 )
              I think you're misrepresenting the lawsof the United States here. There's no federal law against prostitution. Most states in the union do have laws against it, yes, but not all do. I know that Nevada allows it, as long as the brothels have licenses and the workers are treated fairly and screened for diseases. I don't know the positions of all the states with regard to prostitution, though. I would appreciate examples if anyone has any.
          • Re:Forced? (Score:5, Funny)

            by AnotherBrian ( 319405 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @10:03PM (#14018313)
            That's why prostitution isn't a legitimate job.

            EXACTLY, if god had intended women to prostuite themselves he would have given them free will and a vagina.

        • Well, a prostitute knows what she's selling, doesn't she? A lab worker, on the other hand, probably expects to use her mind, not her ovaries.
    • Re:Forced? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tlosk ( 761023 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @07:45PM (#14017834)
      I don't see anything in TFA about coercion ... where did that part come from?
       
      It's implied by the nature of the situation. Which is why it's prohibited. You might easily compare it to a statutory rape scenario. Are there people under 16 who can make sound judgements about whether to engage in sex? Probably, but in order to protect those who aren't we have made an arbitrary cutoff and whether the person was "willing" or not doesn't enter the equation, they are just off limits period.

      A person who works in a lab cannot reasonably be expected to be free from improper pressures that could influence a decision to participate. So to protect them we don't allow it.
      • Re:Forced? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You are surmising a fiction not in evidence. This article posting is exactly why you cannot consider Slashdot a source of "news."

        Reputable journalists preface opinion pieces as such. Infering facts that do not exist is not journalism.

      • Re:Forced? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by whitehatlurker ( 867714 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @07:56PM (#14017877) Journal
        I agree that the situation is a serious ethical breech, and I do understand the situation. However, the submitter indicates that there are allegations of direct coercion of the employee by this Hwang fellow.

        I'm just looking for a source for the reports of this allegation.

      • Re:Forced? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 12, 2005 @08:00PM (#14017901)
        In more advanced countries, we name the laws after the wrong committed.

        ie: It's "sex with a minor", not "Statutory Rape" since whether or not it was rape is not the problem being dealt with (it's a separate problem). The problem being dealt with is that, in fact, sex with a minor occurred. If the minor were raped, then a secondary charge of "raping a minor" would be enforced.

        In some countries (notably my own) it is not considered rape should a 16 year old have sex with a willing 15 year + 11 month old.

        Similarly, we call "improper practices" exactly that, "improper practices". We don't call it "forcing" or "coercion" because we don't know if that's true or not. There's every chance that a doctor so engaged in her duty might actually be willing to donate her eggs to further her research -- it doesn't seem unlikely that it could be so.

        The title should be "Korean Lab Worker uses Improper Practices to Further Research".

        I just wish people would use say what they mean and mean what they say, dammit. Thank God the laws in most countries are much more clear.
      • It's implied by the nature of the situation. Which is why it's prohibited.

        No. Coercion is implied neither in the linked article nor in the situation itself. Why it's unethical is because the research may no longer be unbiased. You look at the situation and see a woman being pressured into providing her eggs. I look at it and see a woman who wants the first cloned human embryo to be her own.

        And comparing it to statutory rape is truly over the top. You should get a +5, Troll for that one!
    • Re:Forced? (Score:3, Informative)

      by FST777 ( 913657 )
      According to TFA she wasn't forced, but under American rules she either shouldn't have provided the eggs, or shouldn't have worked on the project.

      The whole "forced" thing is nowhere to be seen (at least, not in the linked FA) nor is there any word about "pressuring" in TFA. What's more: I guess that under (South-)Korean rules there hasn't anything gone wrong with the whole thing. TFA is about an American scientist who withdrawed from the collaboration. Nothing more, nothing less.
    • Re:Forced? (Score:5, Informative)

      by daremonai ( 859175 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @09:13PM (#14018155)
      Check out the Washington Post article, which has a lot more info (registration required, blah, blah, blah): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/11/11/AR2005111101836.html [washingtonpost.com]

      Here's a snippet of the relevant section:

      For many months after Hwang's 2004 publication, rumors had spread in scientific circles that the eggs Hwang used to achieve that landmark result had been taken from a junior scientist in his lab. That situation, if true, would be in violation of widely held ethics principles that preclude people in positions of authority from accepting egg donations from underlings. The rules are meant to prevent subtle -- or not-so-subtle -- acts of coercion.

      Questions have also circulated as to whether the woman received illegal payments for her role.

      Schatten said that Hwang had repeatedly denied the rumor and that he had believed Hwang until yesterday. "I now have information that leads me to believe he had misled me," Schatten said. "My trust has been shaken. I am sick at heart. I am not going to be able to collaborate with Woo Suk."

    • I actually submitted this news story to SlashDot. Regrettably, the screener did not include the full text of the article.

      Below is the full text of the article from the "Wall Street Journal".

      U.S. Scientist Quits Stem-Cell Alliance
      By a WALL STREET JOURNAL Staff Reporter
      November 12, 2005; Page A5A

      A prominent U.S. scientist is withdrawing from an international collaboration to create human embryonic stem cells.

      Gerald Schatten, a cell biologist at the University of Pittsburgh, said he was sev

  • cheapskate (Score:5, Funny)

    by BushCheney08 ( 917605 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @07:34PM (#14017774)
    Man. What a fucking cheapskate. Eggs are like, what, $1.29 a dozen?
    • That sounds pretty expensive for caviar. You're getting ripped off!
    • Re:cheapskate (Score:5, Insightful)

      by krunk4ever ( 856261 ) on Sunday November 13, 2005 @12:41AM (#14018801) Homepage
      I know the parent was being funny, but on the contrary, eggs cost between US$10,000 to US$50,000. I'm curious to why they didn't just purchase the egg themselves instead of having one of the lab assistants to donate. The only viable reasonings that I can come up with is:

      1. They didn't have enough money, which I highly doubt because with a project of this size, money's gotta be pouring in from somewhere. Though money conservation may be another reasoning, but once again, I don't believe money should've been an issue with this project.

      2. The lab assistant insisted they use her eggs and was happy to donate them. There can be multiple reasons for that. She may have been an unknown lab assistance and if the project was sucessful, her name might have come up once in the findings document, but the top researchers would be the one getting a the credit. Now with her name gauranteed in the article, her fame can be used for multiple things such as taking her into higher levels of research or even lead governmental sponsered researches. I'm not sure what this lab worker exactly was, but if she was an undergrad, she's probably going to be garaunteed admission into any graduate program and if she was a graduate student, have her Ph.D papers signed off. Many of you can see this as 'betraying yourself' to get somewhere and I guess that's what the ethical reasons against this is for.
  • But baby... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tufriast ( 824996 ) * on Saturday November 12, 2005 @07:39PM (#14017803)
    Dr. X: I love you. I love your eggs. I promise not to slap you anymore. No fork them over bitch, I GOT SHIT TO CLONE.
  • Dr. Who suck wang...

    Dr. Woo Suk Hwang

    "Dr. Who" suck wang?
    or
    Dr. whom sucks wang?

    Interesting indeed.
  • by St0rmwarden ( 759530 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @07:47PM (#14017841)
    I would say something about having egg on his face, but I don't really think it's appropriate.

    Now the poor chaps who are trying to achieve something worthwhile with their medical science using stem cells or whatnot have to deal with another round of "oh god, what is the world coming to?" And "quick! Lets ban the whole lot before someone else does something this stupid."
  • RTFA? (Score:5, Informative)

    by MichaelPenne ( 605299 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @07:49PM (#14017848) Homepage
    Nothing about pressuring? Where are you getting that from, ScuttleMonkey, and do the /. editors RTFA's themselves?

    "According to the WSJ" Schatten quit because he heard that one of the lab workers had donated eggs, but there is nothign about pressure in the WSJ article. Is there in the Nature one?
    • ScuttleMonkey can't be marked down 'troll' and lose his +1 posting privledges.

      In fact, people who slag that 'class' of slashdot 'community members' will find their comments 'modded down' with no reason listed.

      If you haven't had a slashdot comment 'modded down without a reason given' yet, you're not trying hard enough.

      Uh, smash the system.
  • by freidog ( 706941 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @07:50PM (#14017851)
    Typical misrepresentation of the facts by the submitter.
    No where in the linked article was there any impliation that Dr. Hwang used any form of pressure, coersion, or other unscrupulous means to obtain the eggs.

    The reasons given by Mr. Schatten is pretty clearly stated:

    Under U.S. rules, collecting eggs from women working on a cloning project would be considered unethical. In the original paper, published by the journal Science last year, the scientists said the eggs all came from anonymous donors.

    Hwang lied about where the eggs came from, and used (from the standpoint of the US) and inappropriate donor.
    I know this is just user submitted stuff here, but could we at leat pretend like accurately representing the article is important. Or do we just assume no one will bother to read a 1/2 summary without some creative spin in the summary.
    • No where in the linked article was there any impliation that Dr. Hwang used any form of pressure, coersion, or other unscrupulous means to obtain the eggs.

      Certain questions from a supervisor carry pressure and coersion- simply because the employee fears for their reputation and livelihood. That's precisely why we have numerous sexual harassment laws in the US.

      If he asked the group or the donors individually, or dropped hints ("gee, we're having a lot of trouble here, wouldn't it be handy if we had some

      • by gordo3000 ( 785698 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @09:39PM (#14018244)
        but then, why is it not unethical for me to work 80 hour weeks for a few months to keep my job by keeping my project up and running? That woman damn well ought to have been under pressure if they can't get donors. The research is important and she, working on the project, was in the best position to know what was needed to keep it going.

        We aren't talking about a woman being asked to give up a baby. We aren't even talking about an embryo. We are hypothetically talking about a lady giving up an egg towards research she probably cares at least a little about.

        In the US, lots of things get called unethical and I don't know why. Even in science, you want the person in your lab group who will take a hit for the team if it won't leave any permanent marks. So the lady couldn't get pregnant that one time around. It is only unethical if you think it is wrong for someone to give up something with almost no value to help a project along. She lost about 28 days of her reproductive life.

        Now if she had been told upon being hired to not get pregnant because they might need her as a donor, that gets into my unethical side. I don't believe there are many fields of work where involving yourself in someone's personal life to that extent is acceptable.

        Though, I"m not attacking you. I'm really attacking a system that says a scientist can't give one more thing towards the success of the project.
        • Egg donation is not a trivial procedure and carries some risk. She would have to take a battery of injected fertility drugs and undergo a minor surgical procedure to retrieve the eggs. There is a small chance that she could lose her ovaries or even her life (search for ovary hyperstimulation syndrome). Given that typically only the principal investigator on a project sees any recongition, I think it's highly unethical.
        • The research might be important. It certainly looks important at this early stage but if we already knew it was going to work, we wouldn't need to do the research at all, would we. There is a small but real percentage of women who die when they donate their eggs. They apparently got an unusually large number of eggs out of a few donors. All we really know for sure is that Huang lied to the public and his colleagues about at least one aspect of his research. The question then becomes whether this was the onl
          • first off, absolutely nothing is proven against this guy. he has been accused of using eggs of one of his lab assistants. While it may be semantics, I think it is improper to condemn someone without any hard evidence.

            anyways, there is a small but real percentage of people who die doing anything we consider normal. The question remains, if she voluntarily decided to do this(no threats of personal or professional sabotage), even if the lead scientist let it be known or asked, why is it a problem? The poi
            • He's actually been accused of two things. One is taking eggs unethically. The second is lying about his research methods. The guy dissociating himself from the S. Korean researcher is doing so based on information that came to him on the second charge.
        • This was involving her work in her personal life. Her work was literally inserted into her person. In this case, a needle was inserted through her vagina, into one of her ovaries.

          There is a difference between being expected to temporarily work overtime at a job and being expected to submit to an invasive medical procedure. Working overtime does not violate the your body's integrity, a basic human right.

          We have rules to protect people from having their fundamental interests potentially set against each other
    • All fine and good, except that nowhere do they say they have proof that Dr. Hwang lied or that the eggs really came from a co-worker. Just because it's reported doesn't make it true. People usually need facts to back it up first.
    • The editors are slackers and always will be. I know I may sound arrogant, but lets remember that it's the users that made Slashdot popular. Slashdot basicaly just had to be there at the right time.
    • Maybe the fact that he has been lying about where he got the eggs for over a year might lead to a reasonable suspicion that there's something else unethical going on.

      Or when did lying in your published research become ethical for a scientist?
  • by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @07:59PM (#14017892)
    Consequently, Gerald Schatten, a cell biologist at the University of Pittsburgh, has severed his ties with Mr. Hwang and cited gross breaches of ethics.

    What the submitter left out was this nice bit:

    Dr. Schatten, who was to have led the organization's board of directors, says he is now severing collaboration with Dr. Hwang, due to questions over the source of human eggs used in a 2004 cloning project, and errors in a 2005 paper coauthored by the scientists. A 2004 news report in the journal Nature said at least one female laboratory worker had provided eggs for the project, an allegation that Dr. Hwang has denied on several occasions.

    Is it just me, or does it look like Schatten didn't have a problem with the forced collection, only starting to sever ties (note the tense there: "is now severing", ie, he hasn't finished?) after problems come up with a paper?

    I can't see why else he waited a year after it was public knowledge (and no doubt knowledge to him well before the news report) to sever his ties.

  • by BassZlat ( 17788 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @08:01PM (#14017907) Journal
    They have exhausted their other options when it comes to delaying embryonig stem-cell research.

    Since several states have started passing budgets with money dedicated to embryonic stem cell research, its oponents have been growing increasingly rabid and vicious in the last few months. The 3B dollars approved under proposition 71 in California have been delayed so far for more than a year. Expect those well-meaning folk trying to save your soul at the expense of your body to jump on this news and integrate it in their propaganda machine ASAP.

    If you are subscribed to the google news feed on the topic ("stem cell" or "stem cells" are good candidate strings (does that thing take regexp btw?)) you will see that almost every week a major new scientific announcement is made. There are signs of improvement for a lot of diseases previously thought incurable. Not all of this stuff gets mentioned in the mainstream media in the US.
    • ... it's the stem cells from human fetuses that they have a problem with. It's one of those "slippery slope" cases, whether you believe it or not.
    • I remember when interferon was going to cure cancer. Huge amounts of money got dumped into interferon research. It largely ended up a dry hole. Embryonic stem cell research could end up being a dry hole too. If the adult stem cell guys end up doing it better, cheaper ESC is doomed even if it does work.

      So far, the ASC researchers are many years ahead of their ESC competitors. We have actual ASC therapies with many more in human trials. How many ESC therapies are in human trials? The last I heard, the number
  • by hey hey hey ( 659173 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @08:13PM (#14017966)
    Hwang says it was a language problem.

    Pulled from Science, Vol 304, Issue 5673, 945 , 14 May 2004:

    Last week Nature reported that in an interview a member of the research team admitted being one of the egg donors, raising questions about whether she profited professionally by being a co-author. Nature quoted bioethicists as saying that, to avoid any hint of coercion, there should be an arms-length relationship between the research group and the donors.

    Hwang blames the language barrier for "a miscommunication." He says the woman had tried to explain that, in the future, she would be willing to donate eggs for such research by other groups. Moon-il Park, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Hanyang University in Seoul and chair of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the university hospital that approved the research plan--the eggs were harvested at the hospital--wrote in an e-mail that no one from Hwang's team was among the 16 volunteers. "I confirmed this after being contacted by Professor Hwang" regarding the allegations, he wrote.

  • NKKSU (Score:3, Funny)

    by this great guy ( 922511 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @08:33PM (#14018039)
    As an eminent member of the NKKSU (North Korean Kraeizy Scientist Union), I see absolutely no problem with such practices. I myself regularly force my own lab slav^H^H^H^Hworkers to do such things. Those bastards are so lazy anyway that this is the only way to justify their outrageously high wages. No later than yesterday one of them even asked me a raise to $3.75 per hour. What the H-E-L-L was he thinking ? I can tell you that I added him immediately to the list of subjects that are going to be used in this experiment with the RNA-deconstructor human immunodeficiency virus. This time this is an improved version which works (I think). -- Dr. Madh
  • by apflwr ( 930636 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @08:47PM (#14018084)
    The tag is misleading at best, if not an outright troll. There is no indication that the donor was pressured or coerced in any way. In fact there is no indication of any wrongdoing except for an allegation by the American scientist, with no offering of proof. Do we know what HIS motives were?

    Whoever greenlit this should have caught it-- for God's sake the article itself is a blurb, it would take 30 seconds to read. If you're against human cloning there's plenty of fodder for your argument, you should not be allowed to use Slashdot as your pulpit to demonize the other side.
  • Medical Ethics? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by putko ( 753330 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @09:08PM (#14018135) Homepage Journal
    I've often thought that the medical ethics community was a bunch of smart, Talmudic guys somehow looking for relevancy and importance through their arguing skills. E.g. if a man dies in a car wreck and there's no next of kin, is it OK to harvest his organs? OK, fine -- you are in the middle of harvesting the guys liver, and the intended donor is there cut open -- just when you are about to transfer the liver, the next of kin appear, declare that if you take the liver out of their family member, he won't have one in the afterlife. But if you don't do the transfer the intended recipient will probably die earlier due to having been cut open -- blah blah blah blah.

    Is it OK to harvest fetal material from abortions. When is it OK to pull the plug on a brain-dead person? When is it OK to euthanize somebody?

    This is comical: in early medicine, you had doctors robbing bodies out of graves so they could figure out how the bodies worked. Sometimes they'd get lynched for this, so doctors established a network, so that doctors from town-a would tell doctors from town-b, "we got a body in cemetary-a". Town-b doctors would rob it, and when they had a body in cemetary-b, they'd tell the doctors from town-a. That's the origin of modern medicine.

    I wonder what the medical ethicists would have said.

    I think we'd all be better off if we didn't have medical ethicists, and instead just asked ourselves, "what is legal?"
  • by Ben Varrey ( 919558 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @09:15PM (#14018163)
    What everyone seems to be missing is that, if there's a power gradient, there's implicit coercion involved.
  • by gbdc ( 708056 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @09:33PM (#14018221)
    "an allegation that Dr. Hwang has denied on several occasions"

    Where did anyone other than this slashdot submitter accuse Dr.Hwang of forcing anyone?

    On the contrary, Dr.Hwang is well known for being exceptionally careful to keep his experiements in ethical domain, even at the expense of progresses in his experiments. Please examine the facts first before making a serious accusation like this

  • by marcybots ( 473417 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @09:44PM (#14018258)
    Read the article, it says nothing about pressuring anyone about eggs, whoever wrote the blurb should be punished, they obviously have a political axe to grind against human cloning. The sad part is that most people who see this will believe this guy coerced a employee to donate an egg blindly without reading the story first...READ THE ARTICLE AND TELL ME WHERE IT SAYS HE "PRESSURED" HIS ASSITANT FOR EGGS! It doesnt, it says he misrepresented where the eggs came from, period. So for everyone who is all outraged about this, go to the article and read it before you start venting out of control.
  • Suk Hwang? (Score:5, Funny)

    by danratherfoe ( 915756 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @09:54PM (#14018287)
    Seeing as how his name is Woo Suk Hwang, we can at least be assured that he has an abundant supply of semen to work with.
  • by bstarrfield ( 761726 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @11:38PM (#14018636)
    For all the slashdot crowd here comparing egg donation to sperm donation or, heaven forbid, having to work long hours, a basic interjection of reality (though IANAMD)

    1) Egg donation is a surgical procedure. A painful surgical procedure. A single egg is not magically transported from the woman's body - essentially a surgical procedure akin to a biopsy is peformed. Yes, modern surgical methods are better, but the pain is real, the risk of surgery is real, which leads to:

    2) Egg donation potentially impacts fertility. This is a delicate procedure, and things can go wrong.

    Donating one's eggs to scientific research is a noble action, and I deeply respect the person who does so. But it's a serious matter, and the merest appearnace that outside pressure was applied to influence a worker to donate her eggs calls into question the ethics of the project team itself.
  • by msbsod ( 574856 ) on Sunday November 13, 2005 @01:23AM (#14018900)
    6 hours past, in the meantime two more BS postings from ScuttleMonkey, but neither an update nor an apology by ScuttleMonkey and the author of the article! Posting false accusations and playing with a researcher's reputation is the only unethical misdeed here.

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