Scandal Forces Cloning Pioneer Out

South Korean cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-suk apologized Thursday to the public in the wake of allegations of ethics violations, admitting two female scientists in his lab donated their own eggs for research.

"I am very sorry that I have to tell the public words that are too shameful and horrible," Hwang said, appearing downcast and solemn before a packed news conference. "I should be here reporting the successful results of our research, but I'm sorry instead to have to apologize."

Hwang also said he would resign as head of the World Stem Cell Hub "to atone to the public." The hub, launched last month in Seoul along with international researchers, aims to be a center seeking treatments for now-incurable diseases and had announced plans to open cloning centers in San Francisco and London.

Hwang said he would continue working on his research at Seoul National University.

"I would like to quit my research ... but to return the favors of the public support and those suffering incurable diseases, I will walk the path of a pure scientist," he said.

Hwang's apology came after the Health Ministry said earlier Thursday that an ethics investigation at the university found the two junior scientists gave their own eggs for research. However, the ministry said the donations weren't in violation of ethics guidelines because they were made voluntarily.

Hwang had conducted his own internal investigation into the allegations that have placed his groundbreaking work under a cloud of controversy and led U.S. researchers to withdraw collaboration with the South Korean scientist.

"The responsibility for all disputes and controversy lies on me," Hwang said Thursday. "I will not make any excuse."

The allegations that Hwang's junior researchers had donated eggs for Hwang's research were first made last year in the scientific journal Nature.

Hwang said a reporter from Nature had asked him about the eggs in May 2004, the first time it was brought to his attention. He asked the scientist about it and she admitted it, but Hwang said he publicly denied the report because she had asked that her privacy be maintained.

A South Korean doctor working with stem-cell pioneer Hwang said Monday he paid compensation to more than a dozen women to obtain their eggs for research, raising new controversy about Hwang's work amid accusations of ethics violations.

Roh Sung-il, chairman of the board at Mizmedi Hospital, said he paid $1,400 of his own money to each of 16 egg donors in late 2002 to compensate them for lost work.

Roh told a news conference he paid for the eggs because there weren't enough voluntary egg donors, and that Hwang hadn't known about the payments.

The payments weren't illegal at the time. But in January, South Korea enacted a law banning commercial trading of human eggs.

And on Nov. 12, University of Pittsburgh cloning researcher Gerald Schatten resigned from the stem cell hub and ended his 20-month collaboration with Hwang because of the South Korean's "unethical practices" in collecting eggs from a volunteer then misleading Schatten about it.

Schatten released a statement announcing his resignation from the stem cell hub and has declined further comment.

Last year, Hwang's team at Seoul National University became the first to successfully clone a human embryo. Since then, though, rumors have swirled that some of the 242 eggs used in the experiment were donated by subordinate scientists in Hwang's famed cloning lab.

The World Stem Cell Hub foundation had announced plans to open cloning centers in San Francisco and London. But U.S. support for the effort is has waned since accusations against Hwang surfaced.

The scientific dustup is also renewing debate over the thorny issue of how scientists plan to collect women's eggs vital to their controversial work. Thousands of eggs are necessary to complete cloning projects and few ethical guidelines exist governing how donors should be treated.

The San Francisco-based Pacific Fertility Clinic, which had said it would help the stem cell hub collect eggs beginning in January, said Monday it has severed all ties with Hwang and has dropped all involvement with cloning research.

Scientists and ethicists said Monday that collecting eggs from an employee is unethical because of the potential for subordinates to feel coerced.

There are no known human cloning project ongoing in the United States, though Harvard University researchers have asked school officials for permission and the $3 billion California Institute for Regenerative Medicine said it would fund such work.

Stem cell scientists hope to clone embryos to extract stem cells in order to watch how diseases develop and create new drugs.

The basic idea of cloning is to take a patient's genetic material and plop it into an unfertilized human egg. The implanted DNA then drives the egg to develop into an embryo.

The problem is how to obtain the eggs, especially considering how inefficient cloning technology is. South Korean researchers in 2004 used 242 eggs from 16 donors to yield just one cloned human embryo, which was destroyed after several days to extract stem cells.

About 100,000 American women are injected annually with hormones to stimulate their ovaries to "superovulate" each year at fertility clinics in attempts to conceive babies. The process is arduous, and there's a 1-in-50 chance a patient will over-respond to the hormones, causing complications

The Bedford Stem Cell Research Foundation in Somerville, Mass., is the only known facility to have collected eggs purely for research. It has paid about 20 women about $4,000 each plus expenses to take fertility hormones but hasn't been active since the first of the year as it struggles financially and is reworking its own ethical guidelines.