This is a riot. When the charlatan Hwang was thought to have successfully cloned human embryos and derived patient-specific stem cells, it was lauded universally in the science community as a big and important step forward for regenerative medicine. Now, that it is clear Hwang was lying, the science spin seems to be developing that it’s not even a step backward.
Check out these quotes from a story on the BBC: “I don’t think it has set back research, but clearly we weren’t as far forward as we thought we were,” says Jack Price, professor of developmental neurobiology at the Institute of Psychiatry in London.
Professor Peter Andrews, a stem cell expert at the University of Sheffield, broadly agrees: “Whether or not the cloning works has very little impact on most of the research going on into human embryonic stem cells,” he told the BBC News website.”
If that is their story, they should stick to it. But it is going to be harder to squeeze hundreds of millions out of public coffers and gain private investments when the ability to engage in human cloning has gone from speculation, to seeming accomplishment, and back again to speculation.
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