'Stem cell hero' was asked to sit in prison

Prosecutors proposed a four-year prison sentence for Hwang Woo-suk, who was honored by the Korean media as a national hero through stem cell research.

Former professor Hwang became famous throughout the planet after claiming he had succeeded in creating stem cells from cloned human embryos in 2005. The American Time magazine ranked his research on the list. books of typical inventions of the year. But then an investigation committee of Seoul National University (where Hwang worked) discovered that his research data was fake.

During yesterday's trial, prosecutors said that Hwang had smeared the image of the country and the Korean scientific community. His fraudulent behavior harms other scientific studies in Korea.

The defendant made an apology for the stem cell scandal, but insisted he was not deliberately cheating. Hwang said that some young scientists in the research group deliberately faked data so that he believed the research was successful.

Hwang Woo-suk arrived at the Seoul court as a defendant on August 24.(Photo: AP)

Lee Bong-gu, one of Hwang's lawyers, told Reuters: 'Many people, including prosecutors, are trying to distort my client's precious scientific evidence .'

The trial of Hwang took place for 3 years and legal experts predicted that it could enter the fourth year. Many scientists have testified in court. Hwang supporters held many marches every time the court tried. They claim that Hwang is a talented and legal scientist and should give him the opportunity to correct mistakes.

Stem cells are the original type of cells, programmed to develop into many types of tissue in the body. In May 2005, Hwang's group announced in the American Journal of Science that they successfully developed stem cells capable of adapting to individual patients.

Accordingly, 11 " new generation " stem cell lines were born, in which each line was created by taking genetic material from the patient and placing it in the donor egg . Stem cells are produced with perfect compatibility with the patients themselves, and can be used to treat diseases without fear of rejection.

According to an article in Science magazine, Seoul National University scientists took DNA from volunteers' skin cells and inserted it into donor eggs that had no genetic material left. When this egg develops to the early stages of the embryonic period (about 6 days after transplantation), that means when they are just tiny cell spheres, people will " harvest " stem cells. When examining the finished stem cells in the laboratory, the team observed that they seemed to be perfectly compatible with individuals who donated DNA immunologically.