Wesley J. Smith

Science has steadfastly defended Hwang’s research—until now. It is investigating the 2004 paper that announced the first human . . . . Continue Reading »

Reuters Alertnet is reporting that Woo-Suk Hwang’s former partner, Gerald Schatten, who first alerted the world to Hwang’s ethical challenges, may be dismissed by his university. I wonder what that is all about? This story may have only just . . . . Continue Reading »

Some more potential good news comes to us now amidst the human cloning debacle out of South Korea. Early human trials are about to begin utilyzing children’s own bone marrow stem cells to treat brain trauma. The Phase 1 trial (which is primarily aimed at testing the safety of the procedure) . . . . Continue Reading »

The Hwang scandal may involve his every notable scientific work. Questions are now being asked whether he actually cloned a dog and gestated it to birth, which no other biotechnologists have ever been able to do. Now, it looks as if his first announcement in Science, that he had cloned human embryos . . . . Continue Reading »

The Transhumanists might say that Stalin was just ahead of his times when he ordered his scientists to create a half human/half ape species to be warriors. It wasn’t just Stalin. In our own time, Joseph Fletcher, who bioethics historian Al Jonson has called the “patriarch of . . . . Continue Reading »

This laughable depiction of cloning comes to us courtesy of Jamie Talan of Newsday. In a story on December 16 about the Hwang mess, therapeutic cloning was inaccurately described as follows:“This technique calls for taking DNA from a donor cell and transferring it to a cell whose own nuclear . . . . Continue Reading »

As regular readers of Secondhand Smoke know, I am still looking for a mainstream media outlet to accurately describe somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning, one that simply acknowledges that cloning creates an embryo, which is destroyed for research, or perhaps, (in the far distant future) for use in . . . . Continue Reading »

Here’s the latest blatant example of bias by omission in the mainstream media when describing somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning. Once again, the reporter is Nicolas Wade, who writes in today’s story about the Hwang Woo-Suk scandal: “In an article published in Science in March . . . . Continue Reading »

I just received this press release put out by Senator Sam Brownback’s Office:“Late this Friday evening, Democrat proponents of destructive human embryonic stem cell research have lifted their hold/objections to passage of the Cord Blood bill-the “Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research . . . . Continue Reading »

Now Hwang says the research actually happened, but the paper demonstrating his work is being retracted anyway because of errors in photography. But we were earlier told that the journal Science made the errors with the photographs. And he says the samples that could be used to provide independent . . . . Continue Reading »