Wildlife bookends

While we're getting news that scientists have decided to return Siberian tigers (the kind native to Korea as well) into the semi-wild of North Kyŏngsang Province in southern South Korea, there's also news that authorities are returning pure-bred bison into the sort of wild region along the US-Canada border in Montana.

Both moves are ideologically tied together: a return to nature as it once was, as even human society traditionally remembers it, a restoration of heritage (animal and human). We are bringing back something that was evolutionarily fit for its environment but couldn't do much when humans came with firearms and a twisted sense of sport.

Naturally, there are nearby people opposed to this because, well, tigers kill people (and so can wild bison, who also trample crops).

Frankly, I think they shouldn't stop there. I want Dr Hwang Woosuk, when he's done with the woolly mammoth, to get hold of some Ursus Californicus (California grizzly bear) DNA and set some of those cloned bad boys out in the wildlife.

We'll see how long NoCal's clandestine marijuana industry lasts then. (And frankly, it's an embarrassment that by 1922 we'd killed off the symbol of the state.)

Why does this remind me of the North Korean flag?

...

As long as Hwang Woosuk was not involved, I'll try it

Medipost, a South Korean medical company, is boasting the world's first approved medicine using stem cells

From AFP:

South Korea's government drug agency cleared the way Thursday for commercial sales of what it called the world's first approved medicine using stem cells collected from other people.

Cartistem, developed by Seoul-based Medipost, will help regenerate knee cartilage using stem cells developed from newborns' umbilical cord blood, the Korea Food and Drug Administration said.

"Cartistem is... the world's first approved allogeneic (taken from different individuals of the same species) stem cell drug, that can offer new opportunity for treatment of patients with degenerative arthritis," the administration said in a statement.

Having suffered a knee injury following a traffic accident in high school, I'd love to try this and see if it works.

The possibility of using stem cells to regenerate things that have degenerated is extremely promising. The brains of those suffering from Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, the spinal chord of those who have been paralyzed, various organs, etc., etc.

This is all the more promising if it can sidestep the ethical and political dilemma of using stem cells obtained from aborted fetuses.

It's a brave new world.

...

Hwang Woosuk's sentence upheld, but he avoids jail time

Science is reporting that disgraced South Korean scientist (see here, here, and here) Hwang Woosuk has failed to have his conviction overturn but he will stay out of jail:

Disgraced South Korean scientist Woo Suk Hwang had his conviction upheld yesterday by an appeals court in South Korea, which knocked 6 months off Hwang’s suspended sentence.

The court’s action means Hwang won’t have to serve time in jail if he stays out of trouble for 2 years. He was convicted last year of fraud and embezzlement and received a 2-year sentence, suspended for 3 years. Government prosecutors had asked for a 4-year sentence.

Both Hwang and the prosecution appealed last year’s conviction, and each has 1 week to appeal the latest ruling.

Given the ramping up of tensions on the Korean Peninsula recently, this news can mean only one thing: Clone army.

Hwang Woosuk tries to clone his career

And right on cue, he's baaaaaack:

Korea's discredited embryologist Hwang Woo-suk is looking to resume research on cloned human embryos here if he gets the green light from the government.

Professor Hyun Sang-hwan at Chungbuk National University, who acts as a de facto spokesman for Hwang, said Friday that his team will ask for government permission to restart this branch of cloning research.

This is my thinking: If any of his supposed triumphs was in fact valid (and I believe Snuppy is still considered legit), then I say we let him go back to work again. After all, even if he fudged data in the face of overwhelming pressure, he may have some skills that could help the greater good.

And if he is allowed to conduct research again, he will be the must scrutinized scrutinee in the history of scrutinization, so I'm not too worried about him cloning another scandal.

Is Oh Eunsun a victim of Dr Hwang and Korea's reverse halo effect?

It's nearly half a decade in the past, but I guess the Hwang Factor™ is still around: major accomplishments by Koreans are sometimes still regarded with a just-below-the-surface suspicion that there may be shortcuts or subterfuge involved.

This apparently is tainting what should be a celebrated accomplishment by Oh Eunsun, the South Korean who became the first woman to scale all fourteen of the world's peaks over 8000 meters.

From the Los Angeles Times:

In late April, the 44-year-old former government worker became the first woman to scale the planet's 14 highest peaks — all of them over 26,000 feet and located in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges — narrowly beating three European women for the record.

Though hailed as a hero in South Korea, Oh says she has learned a bitter lesson about her endurance sport: Along with capricious storms and thin air, jealousy and resentment often await at the highest Himalayan altitudes.

Oh's record has provoked an avalanche of criticism. Her use of oxygen tanks and her reliance on Sherpa guides break unwritten rules of the sport, some say. Others dispute that Oh even reached the peak of Kanchenjunga on the border between India and Nepal, the world's third-highest summit, suggesting her victory photograph was taken somewhere below the top.

Oh, they say, is a cheater.

This is not a new story (I myself mentioned it several times), but the LAT's John Glionna addressed it a few days ago (with little play in the K-blogs), and he also drew that connection with Hwang Woosuk:

The controversy, many say, raises questions about fair play on both sides. Are Europeans so protective of their traditional success in alpine sports that they would attack an unlikely champion from Asia? Or is Oh the product of a hyper-competitive South Korean culture marked by such scandals as cheating on college entrance exams and the 2006 case of scientist Hwang Woo-suk, who faked groundbreaking stem cell research?

"It's heartbreaking," Oh says of criticism from some female climbers whose exploits inspired her. "But I'm also human. How could I not be angry?"

It sucks to be tagged in a negative way because of your compatriots. Sadly, it's something many of Ms Oh's fellow Koreans routinely do with people of other nationalities.

But at the same time, do these handful of prominent cases warrant such a broad-stroke impression? Cheating on college entrance exams is not unique to Korea, nor is academic dishonesty. Korea sometimes seems to be coated with whatever the opposite of Teflon would be. I wonder, for example, how much worse the fallout would be for Korea Inc in general if Toyota were a Korean company. One could easily argue that the rest of Japan Inc is insulated from Toyota's woes in a way Korean companies wouldn't be were the same problem to befall Hyundai or Kia.

UPDATE (June 2, 2010):
Inspired by a comment at this post at ROK Drop, I'm adding a little something in response to allegations that Ms Oh broke "unwritten rules" against using a sherpa or an oxygen tank, an elaboration of one of my own comments.

Yes, those apparently were "unwritten rules of the sport." And unwritten rules have a funny way of being brought to the light of day when it's most convenient, like for an opponent trying to discredit your victory. I note that this protest comes after the accusations that she was just shy of one of the summits apparently didn't stick.

The sherpa guide "unwritten rule" rings hollow to me, given that the first two people credited with reaching the top of Mt Everest were Sir Edmund Hillary and his sherpa guide Tenzin Norgay [see here]. That same link notes that "every climber carries an oxygen tank because of the lack of oxygen."

Unless the sherpa carried her and her oxygen tank up the frickin' mountain, gimme a break. Ultimately, as the LAT article points out, some Europeans apparently aren't ready for Asian alpinists to make a mark in "their" sport.

(UPDATE below) South Korean woman's claim of tackling world's fourteen highest peaks in doubt

Frankly, I blame Hwang Woosuk for all this.

As I mentioned a few days ago (here, too), Oh Eunsun is poised to be the first woman to reach the summit of all fourteen peaks over 8000 meters, but her next closest rival, Edurne Pasaban of Spain, is apparently claiming that Ms Oh may be cheating:

The two rivals met at Annapurna base camp on 7 April over a cup of tea. "It was a very pleasant chat… we laughed a little. It was good," Pasaban wrote in her blog.

But this week, after Pasaban's descent from Annapurna to Kathmandu, the gloves came off.
She began to voice doubts that Oh had reached the top of the world's third-highest mountain, Kangchenjunga, which both of them tackled in May last year.

Crucially, she sowed seeds of doubt in the mind of the world's most respected keeper of Himalayan mountain climbing records, Elizabeth Hawley.

Miss Hawley, an 86-year-old American, told the BBC that following her conversation with Pasaban on Thursday, she was altering her unofficial but authoritative Himalayan Database to mark Oh's ascent of Kangchenjunga as "disputed".

The stakes are certainly high (get it? high!): If Ms Oh is disqualified, Ms Pasaban gets all the glory and Apolo Anton Ohno will be awarded the bronze.

All kidding aside, this is some serious business, so much so that fellow alpinist Ko Miyoung died last year in the same race for these lofty bragging rights.

UPDATE (April 25, 2010):
Ms Oh's ascent of Annapurna has been delayed until Tuesday because of winds and snow. From AFP:

A 10-member team including Oh and a KBS producer on Friday reached camp three, located at a height of 6,400 metres (21,100 feet).

But they started descending on Saturday morning after giving up efforts to reach the next camp, at a height of 7,200 metres, because of strong winds, KBS TV reported.
Oh and her colleagues were planning to descend to a lower-level camp and wait for the weather to clear. Avalanches and ice falls have claimed the lives of dozens of climbers attempting to summit Annapurna.

Annapurna is particularly dangerous because it is both technically difficult and avalanche-prone, and it has a much higher death rate than Everest, the world's highest peak.
Oh, who was defeated by Annapurna last year, made the decision to delay her assault on the peak after being told by radio from her base camp that it would be snowy and windy at the weekend, Yonhap news agency said.

I'm glad they're putting safety over glory.

WaPo's Michael Gerson on "Climate-Gate"

This op-ed in the Washington Post dovetails nicely with my own views on what the hacked emails (gotta love how so many are so willing to trust the veracity and conclusions of people who would do something like that) from East Anglia University mean — and what they don't mean — and how that fits into the big picture:

Even if every question raised in these e-mails were conceded, the cumulative case for global climate disruption would be strong. The evidence is found not only in East Anglian computers but also in changing crop zones, declining species, melting ice sheets and glaciers, thinning sea ice and rising sea levels. No other scientific theory explains these changes as well as global warming related to the rise in greenhouse gas emissions since the Industrial Revolution. Over millennia, the climate shifts in natural cycles. But we seem to be increasing the pace of change so rapidly that plants, animals and humans may not be able to adequately adjust.

The claim of recent global cooling is deceptive. It is true that 2008 was cooler than 1998. But 1998 was the hottest year recorded since the advent of reliable records in the 1800s, while 2008 was the ninth-hottest. Despite yearly variations, the overall trend goes in one direction. All 10 of the hottest years on record have come since 1997.

But the hacked e-mails are not irrelevant. They reveal another sort of warming -- an overheated academic world in which hard science melts into politics.

Some prominent climate scientists involved in these e-mail exchanges have clearly abandoned a profession for a cause. They appear to exaggerate their public certainty on disputed issues, shade the presentation of information for political effect, tamper with the peer-review process, resist reasonable requests for supporting data and urge the destruction of e-mails to avoid embarrassment. Other scientists in these e-mail chains resist these abuses. But the dominant voices are ideological. The attitude seems to be: Insiders can question, if they don't go too far. Outsiders who threaten the movement are "idiots."

In some ways, the overzealousness of the East Anglia scientists reminds me a lot of the enthusiasm and adulation with which Dr Hwang Woosuk, he of Snuppy fame, was greeted. But just as Hwang's fall from grace did not disprove the viability of cloning nor derail the effort to clone human embryos, I don't think that Climate-Gate — which is not at all the slam dunk its praisers seem to think it is — negates human-induced climate change. But like Hwang's case, I hope it will lead to a harsher eye of scrutiny being cast on the scientists behind this.

Hwang's 2004 study also "falsified"

Marmot will probably have the run-down on this later, but I want to get it out while I'm still in front of my computer: Seoul National University nine-person council has declared that the data in embattled cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk's 2004 study was also forged.

In the 2004 paper, which first brought Dr. Hwang international acclaim, Hwang claimed to have cloned a human embryo and extracted stem cells from it.

There's one ray of hope for Hwang: the panel also said Hwang's alleged stem-cell technology lacked practicality but that Snuppy, the world's first cloned dog, has been proven to be genuine. Snoopy, however, is still a cartoon.

Meanwhile, Kimbob links an article showing that Dr. Schatten's and Dr. Hwang's respective teams are seeking patents for this "failed" cloning technology. I find it interesting that these "discredited" scientists seem to think that there is value in their "failed" work. It did make me wonder if there really isn't something going that hasn't yet come to light.

This is not over yet.

The Eggman

[caption: File photo of Dr. Schatten from the early 1980s, when he was an extra on the set of the Disney film, Tron.]

I've been backing off the story, since I have already said my peace and I'm trying to wait to see what else happens before making any further statements. Meanwhile, I am content for now to rely on other blogs and the news sites for the latest on the scandal. Every now and then I'll comment.

Like right now: Marmot's has a post about a Hankyoreh Shinmun story that Dr. Schatten, erstwhile colleague and collaborator of Dr. Hwang Woo-suk, is going to be sacked.

The Hanky might be jumping the gun, though. I didn't find anything at Google News or Yahoo News (are they clones?) on Schatten's alleged sacking, but I did find this article which includes this information:

That has now turned into a curse for the University of Pittsburgh researcher, whose questionable involvement with Hwang is not his first brush with scientific controversy.

At the very least, Schatten faces a formal reprimand once an internal school investigation is concluded.

“I will consider what disciplinary actions are appropriate in this case pending the findings,” said Dr. Arthur Levine, dean of the medical school and Schatten’s boss.

Well, coincidence of coincidence, it turns out that Dr. Schatten was involved in one of the scandals at my alma mater, the University of California at Irvine (UCI), that I mentioned here at Marmot's as an example of crooked scientific practices elsewhere. It also involved unethically obtained ova (UOOs, for those in the trade):

Ten years ago, a criminal investigation of a UC Irvine fertility clinic reached Schatten's lab at the University of Wisconsin.

The Irvine clinic was supplying Schatten with eggs that had been illegally obtained from women for research without their consent. One Irvine doctor was convicted and two others fled the country.

Schatten believed the Irvine eggs were legally and ethically obtained, said Wisconsin bioethics professor Alto Charo, who helped with the school’s investigation. Charo said the Irvine doctors gave Schatten fraudulent documents asserting the eggs were collected properly.

"Jerry Schatten was absolved of any wrongdoing," Charo said.

Wow! I was blown away when I saw that. It's deja-vu all over again. If Dr. Schatten (aka, the Eggman) were Korean, a bunch of people in the echo chamber known as the Korea-related blogosophere would be applying that "Koreans always got an excuse for everything" line. And Schatten got away clean, while others were thrown in jail or had to flee Korea, I mean, the United States.

Oh, wait a minute. Dr. Schatten is Korean... Dr. Hwang himself referred to Dr. Schatten as "my brother."

Anyway, while looking for that news, I found that Wired has an interesting article on one American's personal stake in Dr. Hwang's research: Good luck, Hwang Woosuk.

ADDENDUM TO POST:
This is all coming back to me now. I remember that scandal being a pretty messy affair (I think the Orange County Register won a Pulitzer for it). By itself, it is nothing to target him with, but one can't help but see a pattern emerging with this guy.

In the 1995 criminal investigation, where one person is convicted and two fleed the country, Dr. Schatten:

(a) says he believed the eggs were legally and ethically obtained all along, and
(b) claimed it was the other guys who gave him fraudulent documents asserting the eggs were collected properly, and
(c) put his name on research (as the contact point, just like with Hwang) on published research conducted with the other guy.

And in 2005 we have another case where Schatten:

(a) says he believed the eggs were legally and ethically obtained all along,
(b) claimed it was the other guys who gave him fraudulent documents asserting falsehoods about the eggs, and
(c) prominently placed his name on a research paper in a way that would make it appear that he had been involved in far more of the research than he actually was.

The two cases (right down to having his name on joint research with the unethical egg obtainer, Dr. Asch of UCI), are just too similar to dismiss out of hand any possibility of a pattern. If he's not more involved than you suggest, then he's either very, very unlucky, doesn't know how to judge others' character, or is just a lightning rod for shit happening.

Like I said, since this guy was already either involved with or burned by illegally and/or unethically obtained eggs, it seems odd that he would have been so nonchalant about this issue here and now.

I think, in all likelihood, Dr. Hwang is ultimately and primarily responsible for whatver mess comes out of this, that needs to be made clear. But Dr. Schatten is no babe in the woods. His involvement is probably deeper than just proofreading. He is no small-time doc himself, so I find it difficult to believe he was all starry-eyed to the point of being rendered senseless about the chance to work with Hwang.

In the 1995 case, Dr. Asch of the UCI scandal fled to Mexico, and he's not talking, so all Dr. Schatten would have to do is plead that he was "duped" by the crafty Argentinian and the Chilean working with him, and he's off the hook. Lo and behold, something similar happens, why not go ahead with the same tried-and-true tactic?

That's just a theory.

I guess the Nobel Prize is out for sure.

I first saw it at Marmot's Hole, and Marmot got it from Oranckay, who had linked an OhMyNews article by Todd Thacker: Dr. Hwang Woo-suk's data on patient-specific cloned embryos was faked. Science Magazine, which had published his study in May, was already talking about the questions dogging Dr. Hwang, though they don't yet include an update.

I had wondered on this blog if he was a visionary or a charlatan, and it turns out the latter is the case. Korea as a whole must begin a period of deep, probing self-examination. As I wrote before:

But if it turns out that this was like the cold fusion debacle, that the cloning process was a sham, then Korea has a lot of soul-searching to do it. Only after that soul-searching can the opportunity be grasped to bounce back from such humiliation through an overhaul of how scientific research is conducted here.

Marmot says, "Oh my fucking God," but I am going to go on record saying I almost feel a sense of relief. Call me crazy, but this appears to be such a slam dunk that only the most blindly nationalistic people will deny that Korea's great hero of science, Dr. Hwang, had fudged his data, and shat all over Korea's technological reputation in the process.

This is a harsh, harsh lesson, but a necessary one, apparently. People wanted Dr. Hwang's results to be real for reasons of scientific advancement (that was certainly the case with me) and also to boost national stature. So strong was the second reason with some people that any attempt to reasonably question the data was met with hostility. Witness how MBC's "PD Report" was vilified. (And while it's true that they may have used unethical means to put together their report, they deserve kudos for going against the grain and trying to get to the bottom of a story so few others were willing to).

Korea as a collective entity needs to learn the importance of crossing one's t's and dotting one's i's, and double-checking and even triple-checking when necessary. 빨리 빨리 won't fly in the modern world.

This is a blow, but I also have great faith in Korea's collective ability to bounce back from a deserved setback. In 1997, European banks were calling the Korean economy "moribund" and worse, but under the Kim Daejung administration, soul-searching led to a major restructuring of how things were done, and Korea came back stronger than ever (though there are still reforms that need to be done).

Similarly, Hyundai swaggered into the American car market with plans to dominate with low-cost automobiles, only to be practically laughed out of the competition with such piss-poor quality cars that few would buy them. Hyundai learned a harsh but important lesson, went back and completely restructured their plan of attack, and is now producing vehicles praised for their quality and styling.

Scientific research will be scrutinized more carefully. People are going to realize that ethics are an essential part of research, not a luxury or a means to beat Korea up.

The question now is, were all of Dr. Hwang's cloning projects faked, or is it just the attempts to clone patient-specific cells? After all, Dr. Hwang's team has also been credited with being the first to clone human cells, sometime earlier. There's also the dog and some other animals.

How much of it is real? Is all of it fake? Is there anything that can be salvaged from his research? I hope so, but not for Korea's scientific stature. I hope so because I still feel that therapeutic cloning is still an important field that deserves attention.

But for now, my hat is off to Baduk, who has been beating this drum for quite some time.

Send in the clones!

I'm still reeling from a grueling chemistry final and my mind is in a science-oriented mode. And just in time for that, today's issue of the prestigious journal Science reports that South Korean scientists have created the world's first human embryonic stem cells that are customized to injured or sick patients. This is considered a crucially important step toward growing patients' own replacement tissue to treat diseases, which is one goal of proponents of cloning research.

These are the same scientists who are headed by Dr. Hwang Woo-suk of Seoul National University, who created a lot of buzz for Korea's cloning industry (which they completely copied from the Japanese and the Americans!) last year when they became the first to clone a human embryo.

The clonings last year were a genetic match to a healthy woman, not a sick person. But now the Korean scientists have cloned patient-specific stem cells, which is important to prevent rejection by the body's immune system.

The "subjects" were males and females from two to fifty-six, all suffering either spinal cord injuries, diabetes or a genetic immune disease. But, they warn, therapy is still years away from being tested.

The same lab also found ways to more quickly and more safely cull stem cells with far fewer donated eggs. It only takes twenty per try.

Not that Korean women are really using their eggs that much, evidenced by Korea's all-time low fertility rate of 1.15 births per woman. Maybe the government could utilize cloning to create more babies, which could be raised by the beneficent state in special centers to turn them into productive members of society (hat tip: Aldous Huxley).

UPDATE (December 15, 2005):
Ah, crap.