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-------------------------------------------------------------------- Editorial: Phony cloner Why Korea stem cell fraud matters here Published 2:15 am PST Thursday, December 29, 2005 Story appeared in Editorials section, Page B6 Can California's $3 billion stem cell institute learn something from the misdeeds of South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk? It can, but only if leaders of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine take the time to publicly grapple with this scandal. So far, they have acted as if Hwang is a distant aberration whose fabrications don't affect them. Nothing could be further from the truth. As a column on the opposite page notes, Hwang was once the world's master "cloner" in creating lines of embryonic stem cells. Last Friday, he admitted faking key parts of his research and resigned from Seoul National University. Hwang's methods first came under scrutiny when some of his colleagues accused him of buying human eggs from his underlings, a breach of ethical protocol. Now investigators are examining if Hwang broke other rules and faked other studies. While California's institute can do only so much to combat scientific fraud - the responsibility lies largely in the hands of peer-reviewed journals - it can set standards for obtaining eggs and other biological material, and ensure those rules are enforced. The institute's medical standards working group is now preparing such regulations. Yet at their last meeting, on Dec. 1, the committee's members went out of their way to avoid any discussion of Hwang's mounting troubles. Why is Hwang relevant? Because up until this month, he led the world's top lab in this field, and he supposedly had rigid standards in place. Now, as we have learned, Hwang created a Potemkin Village of ethical standards - a façade that he could display at colloquia that was as thin as a sheet of cardboard. How did Hwang create that façade? How was he able to exploit it? What institutional safeguards were missing that might have exposed Hwang's fraud earlier? While the answers are still murky, the California institute needs to at least start asking the questions - assuming it wants to avoid a similar scandal. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn