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INTERVIEW: A Conversation With Dr. WOO SUK HWANG and Dr. SHIN YONG MOON 2 Friends, 242 Eggs and a Breakthrough By CLAUDIA DREIFUS Published: February 17, 2004 SEATTLE, Feb. 16 — For men who had just thrown a giant ethical bomb into the world of science, Dr. Woo Suk Hwang and Dr. Shin Yong Moon were dashing about Seattle last week in a remarkably relaxed mood. Dr. Hwang, 51, and Dr. Moon, 56, faculty members at Seoul National University in South Korea, had announced at a news conference here at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that they had successfully cloned a human embryo and extracted a stem cell line from it. Some ethicists were alarmed by the news. "The age of human cloning has apparently arrived; today, cloned blastocysts for research, tomorrow cloned blastocysts for baby making," wrote Dr. Leon R. Kass, chairman of President Bush's Council on Bioethics. "In my opinion, and that of the majority of the council, the only way to prevent this from happening here is for Congress to enact a comprehensive ban or moratorium on all human cloning." But Dr. Hwang, a veterinary medical researcher, and Dr. Moon, an obstetrician, were quite calm. They drank Cokes at the Space Needle and took photographs of the journalists who interviewed them. "This is a fantastic moment," Dr. Hwang, the project's principal investigator, said. "If I'd known I was going to be interviewed this much, I would have practiced my English much harder," added Dr. Moon, who learned some of his English in the 80's when he studied in vitro fertilization at the Jones Institute of Reproductive Medicine in Norfolk, Va. The men say they are close friends. For years, Dr. Hwang (rhymes with song) has been making headlines in South Korea by cloning cows and pigs. Eighteen months ago, he approached Dr. Moon and asked him to join his research team; Dr. Moon's work in in vitro fertilization, he said, would greatly aid his efforts at human cell cloning. "Therapeutic cloning is not really a medical doctor's job; it's a research doctor's job," Dr. Moon said. "Professor Hwang's lab is really fantastic. It's known as the `cloning academy' or `the power plant for cloning.' " Dr. Hwang added: "It's a power plant where we want to help solve some incurable human diseases." Q. Leon R. Kass, the bioethics adviser to President Bush, said that he would like to see your type of research banned in the United States. What is your reaction? WOO SUK HWANG Our goal has never been to create cloned human babies, but to find the causes of incurable diseases and to offer a new window for cures. SHIN YONG MOON Professor Hwang and I have called for a ban on reproductive cloning. We don't want people using our techniques to make human beings. We urge every nation to prepare a law as soon as possible to prevent human cloning. As a scientist, I think reproductive cloning should be banned. Q. What do you think would happen to American science if all cloning were banned? MOON If all human cloning will be prohibited here, that would be a problem for American science. Stem cell research [which cloning facilitates] is very important for understanding the basic science of human development. And it is also very important for new drug evaluations. So biotechnology development — not all of it, but some — would be delayed and hindered in the United States. Q. Do you have problems with your own government over your work? HWANG I can answer your question like this: If Korea were to prohibit therapeutic cloning research, we would have to go to other countries where it is permitted — Singapore, mainland China, maybe Great Britain. But my hope is that the Korean government will give us the license to do this kind of research. If they don't, we will move. Right now we are stopping our work for a short while and thinking about what we shall do next. We'd like to discuss this with our government. We'd like to have their confidence on this kind of research. Then we'll start again. You know, almost half of our research team is Christian, including Dr. Moon, who is Methodist. At the lab, we have discussed why we have to do this work. We have asked ourselves, Is there any way to achieve the treatment of some incurable diseases without therapeutic cloning? The answer is, It is a scientist's responsibility to do this research because it is for a good purpose. Q. What is the religious tradition you come from, Professor Hwang? MOON Let me explain more because Professor Hwang and I are of a similar age, though I come from a middle-class background. Immediately after the Korean War, we had nothing to eat or drink. The first words I ever spoke in English were, "Hello, give me a chocolate!" This is what we said to the G.I.'s. Everybody suffered from hunger. We had nothing. The only way to succeed in life was to study very hard. So Professor Hwang got a good education by being a really hard-working young man. He'd get up at 4:30 every morning and work till midnight. He still does that. Q. Professor Hwang, was there anything in your rural background that made for your interest in cloning? HWANG Yes. I took care of cows from early childhood on. To this day, I can communicate with cows without any conversation, just by looking, eye to eye. This is partly why I have been interested in animal cloning because I can see how it can solve a lot of problems for farmers. With cows for instance, some produce only milk, others only meat. In 1999, through cloning, our lab was able to produce a cow that is good for both — a kind of supercow. Then, in 2002, we succeeded in cloning miniature sterile pigs whose organs can be used for transplantation to humans. We collected the somatic cells from pigs and inserted some of the human immune gene into the pig's somatic cell. So with these successes behind us, the time seemed right to try therapeutic cloning to cure incurable human diseases like Parkinson's and spinal cord injuries. Q. To create this cloned embryo that was used for a new stem cell line, 16 Korean women donated 242 human eggs to your project. How did you find these remarkable volunteers? HWANG In Korea like everywhere else there are young ladies who are curious about therapeutic cloning. Some heard about us and they contacted us with e-mail. Also, we sometimes gave lectures about our work. After we spoke, we received inquiries and we arranged meetings and discussed fully what egg donation meant. If they said yes, we enlisted them. We did physical and mental examinations. We asked if they understood what we were trying to do. We gave them a chance to change their minds. Q. You aren't the first biologists to try these human cloning experiments. What did you do differently from the others? HWANG We used a squeezing method when we extracted the nuclear material from the ovum. We did it with minimum damage to the egg, which isn't easy because human eggs are very, very sticky. Next, we used a different activation time to mimic the fertilization of the egg. We also used a special culture medium for growing the reconstructed egg. MOON Also, there is something special about Dr. Hwang's lab. It's something in our Korean culture. The micromanipulation that we did for the cloning, it's a very tedious job. But people from our part of the world are very patient, and that helped. Our researchers had an almost Zen-like sense of concentration; they could sit for 10 hours in one spot and carefully manipulate the eggs. It was almost like a meditation. HWANG I also think, quite seriously, that our Korean finger techniques helped. Koreans eat with metal chopsticks, which are very slippery. We are trained from an early age how to manage them. Q. What are the economics of this? Will you become rich? HWANG We have applied for a worldwide P.C.T. [Patent Cooperation Treaty] patent for the technique we developed and also the cloned human embryo stem cells. Sixty percent of the patent will be owned by the university. The remaining 40 percent will go to the other collaborators. Dr. Moon and I will not be participating because we are professors. Q. Are you refusing money so that your motives can never be questioned? MOON That's right. Korea is a country where respect for the professorship is a little bit different than in the West. Professor Hwang takes the honor, not the money. Q. Do you think you'll get a Nobel Prize? HWANG Not now. The way I understand it, if the younger generation accomplishes its task and takes what we have done further, then maybe. What we've done is a beginning step. 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