Hwang Woo-Suk, South Korea’s cloning pioneer, has resigned from his official posts, taking responsibility for ethical violations by his team during landmark research to grow human embryonic stem cells from a cloned embryo.
Hwang said on Thursday that junior researchers in his team had donated their own eggs without his permission. The donation of eggs carries a small risk and ethical rules forbid junior members of teams doing so, to avoid the possibility of coercion. Hwang also said that other women were paid for eggs used in his breakthrough project, also without his knowledge.
He admitted that he had lied when ethical questions began to surface in 2004 about the origin of the supply of human eggs available to his researchers