Koreans 'Blinded' to Truth About Claims on Stem Cells

Roh Sung Il, chairman of MizMedi Hospital, the fertility clinic where women donated eggs for Hwang's research, blamed "national pride" for the ethical breaches. He said Hwang's team had lied to the public about not paying donors for eggs -- Hwang had long claimed the ova were provided voluntarily by women supporting his work. Roh also acknowledged that at least two of Hwang's female researchers had been encouraged to donate.

For months after the allegations surfaced, Roh said, he lied to protect Hwang, claiming Hwang knew nothing about the researchers' egg donations or payments made to other women for their eggs. Roh said Hwang accompanied at least one of his female researchers when she underwent a procedure for egg donation.

Roh finally went public on Dec. 15, the day that he said Hwang informed him of far broader research falsifications that appeared to discredit the work. Roh had not spoken out earlier, when South Korea's Health Ministry continued to support Hwang, insisting the egg donations were in line with the country's legal and ethical standards. Internationally, however, the donations by female staff members were considered a violation of medical ethics, researchers said, because subordinates should not be persuaded or coerced to collaborate when it would put their health at risk.

"Look, Hwang was a national hero," Roh said. "If I held him responsible earlier, all the people in Korea would have blamed me, not him. I knew in my heart that I should tell the truth sooner, but I was afraid."

At a news conference Thursday, Hwang, 52, offered an apology to both the nation and the world for what, after weeks of denials, he finally admitted were "exaggerations" in his work. He also conceded that he had lied when he said he had not paid women for eggs for research. He also took responsibility for his team's flawed work.

Nevertheless, he defended portions of his work. The university panel, he noted, effectively backed up his assertions of having succeeded in creating cloned human embryos -- he said his team had cloned a total of 101. The panel also verified his claims of having produced Snuppy, the world's first cloned dog, last year, in addition to cloned cows and pigs.

Hwang said he failed in overseeing key data and by not keeping track of the number of eggs used in experiments. Estimates now are that Hwang's researchers used almost five times as many eggs as originally stated. Hwang blamed the lapses primarily on the team's unrelenting focus on its goal -- major breakthroughs.

"We were crazy, crazy about work," he told reporters on Thursday. "I was blinded. All I could see was whether I could make Korea stand in the center of the world through this research."

The recriminations did not stop with South Korea. Many here have expressed concern that the U.S. journal Science -- now in the process of retracting Hwang's major 2004 and 2005 studies and beefing up its standards -- allowed Hwang's claims to appear without stricter fact-checking.

But South Koreans are mostly blaming themselves. This week, the government announced it would no longer fund the World Stem Cell Hub, which had been coordinated by Hwang. President Roh's special adviser on science and technology, Park Ki Young, meanwhile, has resigned following allegations that government authorities might have been involved in a coverup. Hwang also tried to resign his post at Seoul National University, but the school has refused to accept it -- saying it plans a series of disciplinary hearings. The government has said it will launch an audit of national funds provided for Hwang's research.

Attempting to protect its drive for technological innovation, the university and the Ministry of Science and Technology said they were overhauling their ethics guidelines.

"We all should have been more skeptical from the beginning," said Park Sang Chul, a prominent biochemist at Seoul National University and a friend of Hwang's. "We all wanted to believe him, needed to believe him, because it made Korea great," Park continued. "Now he has betrayed us, and all we can do is retrace our steps, see where we erred and try to move on."

Researcher Vicky Kim contributed to this report.