Bulsajo

Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 8:36 am Post subject: Time on Hwang: The rise and fall of the clone king |
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I know there are other threads on the subject, but if you're like me you have just bits and pieces of stories and could benefit from reading an overview;
Here is a good summary of the entire affair:
Time Magazine wrote: |
The Rise and Fall of the Cloning King
Woo Suk Hwang led the world in human cloning and became a national hero in South Korea. Now he's a scientific pariah. Inside his demise
By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK
Jan. 9, 2006
When Woo Suk Hwang burst into international prominence back in 2004, seemingly out of nowhere, his story seemed too good to be true. Here was a poor Korean farm boy who had overcome his humble origins to become a leading veterinary scientist, and then gone on to achieve a scientific landmark: the first therapeutic cloning of a human embryo. That transformed him into a biomedical superstar and made his native South Korea--a country better known for its serial television dramas than its scientific accomplishments--into the undisputed leader of a technology that could revolutionize modern medicine.
Over the next year or so, the tale only got better. Hwang, aided by a tireless, dedicated and underpaid laboratory staff that venerated him, went on to create multiple lines of thriving stem cells with unprecedented efficiency and ease. He topped his performance off last summer with yet another feat that had eluded some of the world's most talented scientists: the first cloning of a dog, called Snuppy. TIME named Snuppy "Invention of the Year" for 2005, but that was merely the icing on a cake of praise and recognition for Hwang. Scientists from around the world were clamoring to collaborate with him. Volunteers besieged his operation, offering themselves as research subjects. The South Korean government began pouring millions into his chronically underfunded lab. He was given round-the-clock security and free travel on Korean Air for life.
But in the months since Snuppy's debut in the journal Nature, Hwang's saga has been rewritten--as a Greek tragedy... |
Entire article here:
http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1145236,00.html |
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