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Lesson in South Korea: Stem Cells Aren't Cars or Chips
By CHOE SANG-HUN
International Herald Tribune
SEOUL, Wednesday, Jan. 11 - The downfall of Hwang Woo Suk, the South Korean scientist vilified for faking his papers, holds a lesson for developing countries rushing into cutting-edge life science: Do not try to clone human cells the way you churn out cars and computer chips, experts in science regulation said Wednesday.
In a strategy envied by other developing countries, South Korea has become the world's 11th-largest economy by focusing national support on target industries and producing quick results. It is a recipe that enabled the country to challenge Japanese supremacy in semiconductors and shipbuilding.
In the past three years, with Dr. Hwang blazing the way, South Korea has tried the same trick with biotechnology.
That endeavor flopped spectacularly on Tuesday when a panel at Seoul National University announced that Dr. Hwang had completely falsified evidence for papers that had appeared to propel South Korea into global leadership in stem cell research. In his discredited articles, Dr. Hwang claimed to have mastered the technology for cloning human stem cells, a breakthrough toward healing patients with their own regenerated tissue.
"For the Korean government, Hwang was sort of the shortcut for biotech revolution," said Prof. Herbert Gottweis at the University of Vienna, who is studying global regulations on stem cell research. "There was this desire to move ahead rapidly, and Hwang was supposed to be the person to pull this cart."
The South Korean government built a regulatory model on this shaky foundation, he said.
The scandal is having wide repercussions. Park Ky Young, a co-author of one of Dr. Hwang's landmark papers, offered Tuesday to resign as President Roh Moo Hyun's secretary for scientific affairs, a week after the replacement of the science minister, Oh Myung.
Prosecutors, who have barred Dr. Hwang and nine colleagues from leaving the country, are preparing fraud charges that could be punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
In hindsight, analysts say, it is clear that a hard-driven researcher used - and was used by - a government desperate to generate a vision for a nation whose chronic insecurity among big neighbors was deepening in economic doldrums and a North Korean nuclear crisis.
The story of Dr. Hwang, a handsome 53-year-old veterinarian, fascinated South Koreans. He was more a hard worker than a genius; he claimed to take no days off. He likened his work to "raising the Korean flag on the hill of global science."
He was also a shrewd operator. At his lab, junior staff members revered him. But presiding over the lab's hierarchy, he also collected letters from women on the staff pledging to donate eggs for his experiments, according to the panel's report.
Outside the lab, Dr. Hwang was the nation's most sought-after lecturer. He preached the importance of stem cell research to prosecutors, judges, students and even the presidential staff. When criticized for attending too many social functions, he defended himself as "an evangelist for biotechnology."
He was also an academic wheeler-dealer. Some of his co-authors made no contribution to his papers, except for helping him obtain eggs or lending their names, the investigation panel said.
Dr. Hwang first came to national attention in 1999, when he said he had cloned a cow. But it was after Mr. Roh's inauguration in 2003 that Dr. Hwang gained the status of national hero. South Korea poured funds into his research, designated as a "next-generation motor for economic growth." On the stock market, investors snapped up any share that had "bio" in its name.
"The government is most responsible for creating the Hwang idol," said Jang Sung Ik, chief editor at the South Korean journal Environment and Life. "It gave people an impression that Hwang's technology was a goose that lays golden eggs."
Dr. Hwang published his first major paper on human stem cell cloning in February 2004. But it was early 2005 before the government issued a law regulating the highly sensitive research. A regulatory committee set up under the law filled 7 of its 21 slots with government ministers.
"The bioethics law had little to do with safeguarding bioethics but everything to do with giving Hwang a legal support," said Chin Kyo Hun, a professor emeritus at Seoul National University, who took part in drafting the law.
Dr. Hwang appeared to deliver, though, by publishing splashy papers in prestigious journals like Science and Nature in rapid succession. He said he "opened big gates in stem cell research and only had a few twig doors left."
After President Roh cut the tape for Dr. Hwang's World Stem Cell Hub in October, thousands of patients with spinal cord injuries, diabetes and other ailment applied for treatment.
"What he delivered certainly looked exciting for the political establishment in Korea," said Robert Triendl, a research coordinator at Riken Research Center for Allergy and Immunology in Japan. "So, step by step, they put him into an ever more powerful position, without really understanding what his work was about."
Professor Gottweis, of the University of Vienna, said that as late as November, when he interviewed Seoul officials for his survey of stem cell regulations, they would not discuss bioethics issues but "only wanted to talk about how to support Hwang."
Through Dr. Hwang's fall, South Korea is belatedly learning that biotechnology is not the forum in which to play out its industrial policy ambitions. Unlike electronics or information technology, where the country excelled by building upon technology pioneered by others, biotechnology is a cutting-edge sector teeming with critics. And the field requires a highly sophisticated regulatory system.
"The lesson is that in biotechnology, growth is not everything," said Song Sang Yong, head of the Asian Bioethics Association. "It's an area where countries should take each step cautiously." |
