The hidden face of human cloning shows up : the rogue Korean scientist confesses that he falsified his results

In another shocking revelation, the Korean Professor Hwang Woo-Suk who had already confessed to the unethical practice having used oocytes “donated” by his subordinates, recognized that he had falsified results of research published in top-level scientific publications as Science. To read an abstract of his falsified article click here.

While Hwang had recognised having paid the oocytes donors (read one of our previous posts), he had also retracted an article published on the 19th of May 2005 in Science, and which revealed that he had “produced” 11 series of embryonic stem cells from a human clone embryo. According to a Korean independent commission of enquiry, Hwang had manipulated the photographs and data of two series of cells, to pretend that he had obtained 11 series from an embryo, which is false.

As these revelations surfaced, the wave of support for Hwang in Korea (we quoted in a previous post the web site where women volunteered to give oocytes) faded immediately. About 17.500 Korean scientists writing on the site www.scieng.net (in Korean) asked the Korean government to sanction Hwang saying that his works were a scientific “hoax”.

This comes as a salutary news as the public hysteria around stem cells was gaining politicians in various Western countries, where bills aiming to promote research on stem cells are being prepared. As many newspapers stressed, this means that cloning is not getting anywhere, for now. There are no tangible results, the methods are not even tested, and therapeutical possibilities pertain only to the domain of fantasy.

Because there is a good part of ideology in promoting stem cell research, some of the supporters of these researches such as Marc Peschanski (research director of the French Inserm) had been so lastingly blinded that he told Le Monde a few days ago: “I cannot imagine that Hwang Woo-Suk is a master-defrauder”. Read the interview of Peschanski here.

Euthanasia in Belgium : 97 % of Flemish Catholic hospitals authorise euthanasia for their patients

Full coverage on the web site of The Dawn of Europe

A recent study published in Health Policy of October 2005, and realised by the Catholic University of Leuven revealed that about 97 % of the responding Catholic Hospitals in Flanders (the northernmost part of Belgium) do authorise their physicians to practise active euthanasia, while 60 % of the Catholic nursing homes also permitted euthanasia.

Active euthanasia (the administration of a lethal substance with the intention to kill) is legalized by a Belgian act of 2002 under conditions. Nevertheless, under canon law and the Declaration on euthanasia of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1980) “ nothing, nor nobody cannot, in any manner, justify the murder of an innocent human being whether it be (...) an adult, an old person, or a person who is dying ”, while Evangelium Vitae precises that “ euthanasia is a serious violation of the law of God, since it is a deliberate and morally unacceptable murder of a human person. This doctrine is based on natural law and on the written word of God, it is transmitted by the Tradition of the Church, and is thought by the ordinary and universal Magisterium ”. Under canon law, canon 808 stipulates that “ No university, even if it is really catholic, can bear the title or the name of catholic university without the consent of the competent ecclesiastical authority ”. Hence, no university hospital may continue to authorise euthanasia and keep its Catholic denomination – except in Belgium, of course.

If you want to read more about the study and download it in exclusivity from the web site of The Dawn of Europe, then click here.

Therapeutical freedom and best interest of a child before a French court

French medical deontology determines that a physician benefits of the therapeutical freedom when treating a patient. The “therapeutical freedom” entails the right to choose the cure that might be the best – in the doctor’s opinion – for his patient. It corresponds to the right of the patient of choosing his doctor (S. WELSCH, Responsabilité du médecin, Paris, Litec, p. 89). There are nevertheless limits to the therapeutical freedom: the physician should always be very careful in the case of danger for the patient, or when some new treatments are insufficiently experimented.

A case which made the front page of newspapers, has precisely illustrated this “therapeutical freedom” in an unexpected manner. A six-year old child suffering of a cancer of the face had an extension of the cancer to the jaw. The parents wished that their child be operated in order to enable him to have a better quality of life. A specialist of facial surgery first favourable to the operation then declined, on the concordant opinion of his colleagues who recommended complementary exams before operating. The parents then brought the case before a judge responsible for urgent decisions (Tribunal des référés, a one-judge first-tier court, responsible for judging cases where emergency is proved). The case was judged yesterday, 29 November 2005, and the judges’ decision was to declare itself incompetent in the case:

“The legitimate desire of the demanders [the parents] to put all in action to favour the healing of their child cannot allow them to ask the State to interfere in physician-patients relationships and in the independent exercise of the medical art by requesting the realisation of a surgical operation”. The judge posed another barrier to the intervention of the judicial in the medical field by saying that appreciating the appropriateness of an operation does not “pertain to the judicial debate, but only to the competence of the health care professionals who must, in conscience and in the interest of the child, decide of the most appropriate treatment for his state”.

In the aftermath of the decision, the centre Antoine-Lacassagne where the child was being hospitalized announced that he would be however operated, a decision which the French media saluted as being the result of dialogue.

The judicial decision, however, was in line with traditional legal opinion, though it is the first of this type in France. It is a mark of an evolution of the medical relationship in France towards a confrontational style, in the example of what takes place in the U.S. It is no wonder that the judge of référés thought it was necessary of establishing boundaries as to the action of the judicial body in medical matters.

On the ethical plane, it seems that the deontological problem was allegedly complicated by the fact that some French newspapers alleged that the medical community was set against a case being treated outside of the traditional scheme of treatment.

Ethical scandal around a Corean professor specialist of cloning

The Corean professor, Hwang Woo-Suk, a world specialist of cloning had to resign on the 24 November 2005, in the wake of an ethical scandal around his works on cloning.

Hwang, whose laboratory was dubbed by the reputed American Time magazine a “trailblazer” in the field of animal and human cloning, was accused of having accepted that his subordinates donate their oocytes for the research on cloning. Ethically, gift of cells or body parts by subordinates is traditionally banned in the scientific community, because subordinates might feel pressured into “giving” these cells owing to their subordination.

While Hwang resigned, a popular movement arose, where hundreds of Korean women volunteered to give their own oocytes for research. Partially owing to a context of sensitive nationalism, partially to the birth of a web site “Ilovehws” which collects promises of gifts, many of the donors appear to have been impressed by the potentialities of stem cell research – even though they have largely remained theoretical to date.

The point is that South Korea has invested much in embryonic stem cell research – which is forbidden in many countries around the world, among others France and the U.S. Hence, the scandal falls very badly for a country which is trying to take a lead in the potentially astronomic economic advantages that might result of a breakthrough in the therapeutical use of stem cells.

Latest research give however a hope for a continuation of research in a direction less ethically sensitive: it might be possible to use stem cells of the walls of the ovaries, thus eliminating the need to use oocytes. It should not be inferred that the ethical problems related to the destruction of potential life in the embryo would be eliminated: in fact the multipotent cells of an ovary have a capacity of differentiating into… oocytes. Hence, the development of a human embryo and its destruction to obtain stem cells would remain a necessity, even through this technique. Nevertheless, an evolution was visible on the front of the French legislator, who is seriously considering legalising stem cell research.

It might be noticed that this ethical scandal only illustrates the dangers when the economic possibilities offered by unethical research take over the respect of norms edicted for the common good.