Some year-end feelings about the stem cells research tragedy in Korea

At the same time in 2005, the study of stem cell has been a stem cell crisis about science and ethical science. The world science community is excited about the question of artificially " patient specific stem cells " that Woo Suk Hwang of the National University of Korea claimed to have achieved.

There are three possibilities for this problem . One is that this cannot happen because Hwang's research has been published in one of the most prestigious scientific journals, Science; secondly, a fake could happen but not Hwang's fault because he is very prestigious; He is himself!

From the beginning, I believed that the third thing was ' himself ', because looking at the ' motorway ' racing stem cell research, many groups were stuck, even for the leading research groups in the US (like Harvard's Doug Melton), or in the UK (like Roger Pedersen of Oxford). However, Woo Suk Hwang has passed one car after another, always honking his horn. But Hwang car was burnt in front of Ba Quan Van Vo for fake reasons!

There were also some who thought that Hwang had a talent but was downgraded to a trap. During the investigation process, Hwang confessed to the scientific community that he ordered his level to create DNA data of patient and DNA samples that Hwang published as " patient specific stem cells " ( meaning are cells capable of curing many diseases and not being eliminated by the immune system by the same hereditary individual . In fact, seeing some results, Hwang was a driver, but not very good, because compared to the great funding Hwang used, Hwang's productivity was too low. So in terms of talent and virtue, Hwang didn't have both. The removal of all of Hwang's titles at Korea National University is an inevitable result; According to the reviewers, the idealists are too light and the trial continues.

Hwang's stories emerged a few months later, because Hwang returned to the head of the privately funded stem cell laboratory right in Seoul, the South Korean capital.

The reason is that Hwang always assumes that he knows the secret to creating Human specific stem cells. This is yet another silly event, because when a scientific data has not been replicated by many research groups around the world, its applicability is zero! There are two solutions here for Hwang: ' If ' Hwang has talent and secrets, Hwang should act in silence until the official result is obtained; ' If ' Hwang is a self-respecting person, he should only be a counselor to guide capable people, ideal for achieving the research program's goals. So it will erase the unfortunate image Hwang has drawn for the world of Korea's biological biology, and we will really respect Hwang.

But ' if ' that Hwang is the one who knows how to behave like that, he probably didn't have a stem cell crisis in the first place. In short, all the problems here are ' people ' and scientific research requires more people to show their talent and personality more seriously.

Tokyo, Dec. 25, 2006

Nguyen Thai Son