"Ok, Ok, So Hwang is Guilty.
But Please Don't Let American Jews Take Our Patents."
Laurie Zoloth sent us a stunner. With thousands of women suing because they fell ill from donating eggs to Hwang, Hwang under indictment and easily the best bet for a cell in Seoul, and the entire government of South Korea still reeling from the implications of the fact that a government official was paid off as an ethicist for the Hwang team, and clear evidence now that government officials bribed Hwang staffers to remain silent, and published data suggesting that fewer than 20% of South Korean scientists have heard of the Helsinki accord on human subjects research, you'd thing - really - this would not be the moment for supporters of Hwang to launch a new volley of attacks against collaborators. But you'd be wrong.International Korea (ohmy News) Pete Shanks writes that The Hwang Saga Continues - OhmyNews Internationalleading Hwang supporters have done just that:
The other key point for Hwang's fans is their demand to "protect the patents," which they generally aim at Gerald Schatten, the University of Pittsburgh scientist who collaborated closely with Hwang. Schatten is said to be stealing the cloning technology developed in Hwang's lab; some bystanders hinted at a Jewish-American conspiracy.[Update: see Shanks take on our mention of the role of anti-semitism in the matter in the comments to this post; he doesn't see it as a prevailing theme]
contribute a comment
Comments have been closed for this post.
comments
Thanks for the plug. I did pick up disturbing whiffs of anti-semitism, which I am told is rare in Korea, but I fear you missed the main point about the Hwang fans, which is that they are mostly (a) sane, (b) knowledgeable and (c) right in line with government economic policy. The rest of civil society is, however, making a comeback. The original, slightly longer, version of the piece (without the lovely pictures) is at www.genetics-and-society.org.
- by Pete Shanks on May 19, 2006 at 4:41 PM | link
well, just as I predicted in my previous post. new names crop up.
- by ipanema on May 21, 2006 at 11:17 PM | link