blog.bioethics.net

Still looking. But in the meantime, here's an editorial from the Korea Times, irresistably titled, "Don't Turn Dr. Hwang into Dr. Moreau."
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200511/kt2005112016342454090.htm

- by Sue on Nov 22, 2005 at 5:48 PM | link

This one says that it's been confirmed that eggs were donated by *more than one* research assistant:
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200511/200511220028.html

- by Sue on Nov 22, 2005 at 5:59 PM | link

A comment from Korea. Hope that this would help US scholars to better understand the situation in Korea. Through a series of media interviews and lectures, Prof Hwang has been strongly advocating that the development of stem cell therapy is just around the corner and it would save hundreds of thousands of lives. He has also been arguing that research activities like his would boost the Korean economy by making pharmaceutical and biomedical industries more competitive (in fact, Prof Hwang is currently on the President's committee on biomedical industries, which works very hard to push the privatization of the entire medical and public health sectors in Korea). Thoughtful medical doctors and biomedical scientists have been very worried about this type of exaggeration (and also the market ideology or economism Prof Hwang has been implicitly/explicitly endorsing - but I won't comment further on this) not only because it would give Korean people a false hope, especially to those who have incurable diseases or are disabled and their families, but also the hype it creates would haunt the Korean medical/scientific communities back. Unfortunately, it seems that's what's happening in Korea. Despite the revelation that Prof Hwang's team did pay oocytes donors for their Science 2004 experiment, two of donors were Prof Hwang's graduate students, and more importantly, the team has been lying about this to the government, scientific/medical communities, and the general public, ... a considerable number of Korean citizens think that that's not an important issue at all. Because .... for them, Prof Hwang's research "IS" a cure for incurable diseases ... for them, his research "IS" a solution for the Korean economy. These people think that the societal debates about complex bioethical issues are unnecessary, if not harmful to the patients and the Korean economy. In fact, it was even reported that Prof Hwang's supporters established a non-profit organization to encourage Korean women to donate their oocytes. One may wonder whether this is the right time to do so. But that's precisely the point. It's to save Prof Hwang from (what they see as) unnecessary bioethics/research ethics debates. And the organization is deliberately using the term "egg donation for stem cell 'research & therapy'" even though the development of stem cell theraphy is a remote possibility. This is a very dangerous situation indeed. And it is what you'd get when what Prof David Magus and Mildred Cho refer to as the therapeutic misconception runs amok. Meanwhile, those who have been (it turns out, rightly) criticizing the research practice of Prof Hwang’s team (almost all of them are Pro-Choice and politically liberal/progressive) … are being accused by Prof Hwang's supporters as religious fanatics and as helping US interests by undermining Prof Hwang’s authority. The Korean scientific/medical communities are also in dismay. Very very sad ... Korea needs not be in this mess. Hope the international scientific as well as bioethics communities advise Prof Hwang to please stop playing a media game and to be a responsible scientist.

- by from Seoul, again... on Nov 22, 2005 at 10:11 PM | link

I asked Dong-hee, my colleague who wrote that article, and she said the site is here:
http://cafe.daum.net/ilovehws
Note the picture with Schatten's head turned upside down in the corner and the 143 pictures of mugunghwa (Korea's national flower) symbolizing the number of women who have offered their eggs to Dr. Hwang's research.

- by Ben Applegate on Nov 23, 2005 at 8:18 AM | link