A doctor who provided human eggs for research by cloning pioneer
Hwang Woo-suk said in a broadcast Thursday that the South Korean
scientist admitted that most of the stem cells produced for a key
research paper were faked.
Roh Sung-il, chairman of the board at Mizmedi Hospital, told KBS television that Hwang had agreed to ask the journal Science
to withdraw the paper, published in June to international acclaim. Roh
was one of the co-authors of the article that detailed how individual
stem cell colonies were created for 11 patients through cloning.
Roh also told MBC television that Hwang had pressured a former
scientist at his lab to fake data to make it look like there were 11
stem cell colonies.
Roh said nine of the embryonic stem cell lines Hwang claimed were
cloned in the paper were faked, and the authenticity of the other two
was unknown.
Roh told MBC he heard from Hwang on Thursday morning that "there
were no embryonic stem cells" because all colonies have since died in
the lab.
