November 22, 2005 ? Roh Sung-il, the director of MizMedi Hospital, a fertility clinic in Seoul that provided eggs to Seoul National University Professor Hwang Woo-suk for the latter's stem cell research, admitted yesterday that he paid about 20 women 1.5 million won ($1,430) each for eggs that he then donated to Dr. Hwang. He added, however, that those transactions took place before laws forbidding them came into effect. He said Dr. Hwang did not know about his transactions with the women.
Dr. Roh met the press yesterday and tearfully read a statement explaining the details of his program to acquire eggs for research. He said that in light of recent ethical disputes about the eggs used in Dr. Hwang's research, he wanted to defend his hospital's reputation. He said that in the absence of a statement by Dr. Hwang, he felt compelled to come forward.
He emphasized that none of the eggs were obtained without the donor's consent and that the recruitment of donors had nothing to do with the hospital's own stem cell studies on frozen embryos.
"In 2000, our hospital began creating stem cells from leftover frozen embryos that were donated by patients who received fertility treatments," Dr. Roh said. "For embryonic stem cells, we were registered at the U.S. National Institute of Health and received $500,000 for research. That was before Dr. Hwang, Moon Shin-yong and I agreed to cooperate for therapeutic cloning in 2002." Moon Shin-yong of Seoul National University is another collaborator in Dr. Hwang's research.
Dr. Roh added that in the early stages of Dr. Hwang's research, it was difficult to find donors of fresh eggs, so he searched for donors through a broker without discussing his activities with Dr. Hwang.
"I paid the donors with my own money, not with research funds. The donors were given 1.5 million won," he went on. "This is not a large amount of money, considering that they had to receive injections every day for 8-10 days."
He noted carefully that these activities took place in 2002, before the U.S. National Academy of Sciences drafted its "Statement on Human Cloning" in December 2003, and long before Korea's life ethics law went into effect in January.
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