The end of stem cell research? Hardly

Arthur Caplan, Ph.D. • E-mail

So now the truth is out — South Korean veterinarian Hwang Woo-suk is a liar. The researcher who told the world in print, at lectures delivered all over the world and at endless press conferences that he had done what no other scientist had been able to do — clone human embryos from cells taken from many different people and produce embryonic stem cell lines from each cloned embryo — made it all up.

Hwang perpetrated the greatest scientific fraud, not just of 2005, but of the admittedly still young twenty-first century. Future contenders for that most dubious of distinctions, and there undoubtedly will be a few, are going to have to really work to lay claim to the title of biggest scientific hoaxer, given Hwang’s skullduggery.

The gradual unraveling of Hwang’s web of deceit has caused a moral tsunami in the world of stem cell research. Those who allied themselves with Hwang, such as the University of Pittsburgh’s cloning expert Gerald Schatten and those who helped birth Hwang’s now disgraced World Stem Cell Hub, have been left holding a very malodorous bag of smoke, lies and obfuscations.

The prestigious journals Science and Nature, which throughout the past year published some of the key papers by Hwang, find themselves besieged by questions about the adequacy of their peer review and the thoroughness of their editorial processes. World-class scientists involved with embryonic stem cell research are wringing their hands over what Hwang’s shenanigans will do to their efforts to raise money so they can try to use stem cells to both understand and cure a variety of diseases.

There is one group that has taken particular delight in Hwang’s fall from scientific grace — those who have opposed embryonic stem cell research ever since they learned that human embryos were involved. The pages of conservative magazines and blogs have erupted in a frenzy of we-told-you-so's as the anti-stem-cell lobby strains mightily to use Hwang’s fraud to impugn the entire field of stem cell research. And the press releases of conservative Catholic and Evangelical Christian groups show no hesitancy in attempting to profit from the misfortune of others. They too are now prattling on about how Hwang’s deceit shows that every embryonic stem cell researcher and research proponent has long wallowed in sin.

But it is time for some straight talk about what Hwang’s admission of fraud in obtaining stem cells from cloned human embryos really means.

How did Hwang get away with his misconduct? Did the peer review process really fail? Could any safeguards really have prevented Hwang from perpetrating his fraud or stop future charlatans from doing the same? And, as some are suggesting, is one scientist’s fraud really likely to undercut the future of embryonic stem cell research forever?

Did he really think he'd get away with it?
Let’s start with the easiest question — how did Hwang think he could get away with hoaxing the entire world?

Well despite a lot of hand-wringing, Hwang did not get away with it. He made his cloning claims last May. Within seven months the fraud was revealed and Hwang had been forced to leave his post at Seoul National University. Science has a much better track record for rapidly weeding out liars than, say, journalism, law, business or religion.

Still he almost pulled it off. So why did he think he could?

My guess is that he figured if he claimed he had been the first to make viable stem cell lines from cloned human embryos then all he needed to do was hang on until another scientist really did. If he could use his authority and position to bully his colleagues into silence and keep the physical evidence of his chicanery under lock and key just long enough for someone else to really make stem cells from cloned embryos then he could win a race without actually having to run the course.

He based his fraud on his faith that someone else somewhere in the world — in China, India, Britain, Singapore, Sweden or California — would quickly succeed at getting stem cells from cloned embryos. Then, what they had actually been the first to do would become nothing more than a second — a confirmation of what Hwang had supposedly already accomplished. Once confirmed no one would have any reason to suspect that what the scientific journals had accepted on the basis of personal integrity — which they must do with every paper submitted to them — would never be challenged.

Not a bad plan if it were really true that cloning human embryos is easy to do. That is where Hwang went wrong. It isn’t. In fact it has proven very hard to clone many animals including most monkeys. While human embryonic cloning will happen, it may not happen for years.

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