Brief Chronology, South Korean Stem Cell Case Study
1994
South Korean government initiates the Biotech 2000 plan, under which government and industry will spend 15.5 trillion won (US $18 billion) over a 14-year period on biotech research and development.
1995
Genetic Research Institute enlarged and renamed Korea Research Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB).
1999
On two occasions, Dr. Hwang Woo-suk of the Veterinary Faculty at Seoul National University announces successful cloning of cows at press conferences. No published scientific papers follow.
2002
Research on human embryonic stem cells and somatic cell nuclear transfer research have become national projects with significant funding from various government institutions.
Hwang and collaborators begin a project with the goal of creating patient-specific stem cell lines by deriving stem cells from cloned embryos. The Institutional Review Board at Hanyang University Hospital in Seoul, where the procedures for securing eggs will be done, approves protocols from egg donation. The researchers secure human eggs for the project from at least 16 women. South Korean law requires donors to give informed consent, but does not prohibit paying them.
2004
Jan Allegations that Dr. Hwang’s research team secured egg donations from female graduate and junior researcher members and paid other donors arise in Korea. In public, Hwang denies the allegations and is backed by members of the Hanyang University Hospital IRB.
Feb Concerns continue to be expressed by South Korean citizens’ rights activists and bioethicists. A civic organization began pressuring the government to release the donor documentation.
Spring Hwang asks possible egg donors in his team whether they had in fact donated eggs. They admit they had but ask that he keep the information confidential.
Mar The Ministry of Health and Welfare (MHW) establishes a Bioethics and Biosafety Task Force Team to develop the institutional framework for regulating stem-cell research to ensure its transparency and ethical integrity, and to establish and run the National Bioethics Committee created in the Bioethics and Biosafety Act.
May Participants in the annual meeting of the Korean Bioethics Association call on Hwang and members of the Hanyang University Hospital IRB to answer continuing questions about recruitment of egg donors and funding sources for his stem cell projects.
June News of the ongoing controversy is published in Nature, thus circulating it worldwide.
2005
May Science publishes a paper by Hwang’s team claiming to have produced the first “tailored” (patient-specific) embryonic stem cells by extracting stem cells from cloned embryos. Publication of the paper triggers a threefold rise in prices of South Korean biotech stocks.
June South Korean Ministry of Science and Technology awards Hwang the title of Supreme Scientist, an honor carrying US $15 million of financial support for research.
Oct South Korean President authorizes allocation of US $132 million for establishment of the World Stem Hub at Seoul National University and appointment of Hwang Woo-suk as its President. It is expected to have regional affiliates in several countries including the US, the UK, and Germany.
Nov. Reuters carries reports that the South Korean government is cracking down on people traders in human eggs under a new law that makes it illegal to buy and sell gametes – with penalties up to three years for the broker and two years for the woman selling her eggs.
Dr. Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh (USA) announces they are suspending collaboration with Hwang’s group.
Roh Sung-il, a junior researcher in 2002, now head of the fertility clinic at MizMedi Women’s Hospital supplying eggs for Hwang’s research, holds a news conference. He tells the assembled journalists that in 2002 he had paid some 20 women the equivalent of US $1,400 each for donating eggs used in the research for Hwang’s 2004 paper. Roh also said that after Hwang’s work became well-known, women were willing to donate eggs without compensation. Roh insisted that Hwang did not know of the early payments. South Korean Ministry of Health officials say that no laws or ethical guidelines were breached because there were no commercial interests involved in this transaction.
Hwang supporters establish a non-profit foundation to secure egg donations. Korean journalists report that 800 women have volunteered to become donors by the end of the week.
Hwang calls a press conference and announces his intention to resign from the World Stem Cell Hub. He acknowledged that his laboratory had used ethically questionable means of acquiring human egg cells and apologized for lying about whether junior team members had donated eggs. He claimed to have rejected a proposal to acquire egg cells from his assistants in 2003, but that the two women had then made the donations under false names. He also added that he had lied about the source of the eggs to protect the privacy of his female researchers, and that he was not familiar with the Declaration of Helsinki.
Health Ministry official Choi Hee-joo comments that the egg donors were motivated by desire to serve science and that their actions followed Eastern ethical conceptions and therefore should not be judged by the standards of Western culture.
