Koreans Support Hwang

Koreans Support Hwang

The Korea Herald reported that Hwang Woo-Suk is still receiving strong support from Koreans and that an increasing number of women are offering to donate eggs. In a poll taken by a Korean website, more than 70% of the people said that paying for eggs was not unethical. (I’d like to know what the question was and how respondents were selected.) Civic groups are still urging caution, and don’t want Korea to become isolated from the global scientific community. The Korea Times, in keeping with this thinking, yesterday published an editorial saying, “If he committed ethical wrongdoings in securing eggs, Hwang ought to confess even at the cost of further damaging his reputation and causing setbacks to his research.”

In a related story, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that an agreement between Australian and Korean biotechnology scientists was signed in spite of the scandal. The report has a number of quotations from various scientists about stem cell research and therapeutic cloning.