Hwang May Be Imploding: American Author Removes Name From Cloning Paper

Holy Cow! Now, Gerald Schatten, of the University of Pittsburgh, who quit Woo-Suk Hwang’s cloned stem cell banking venture over the egg issue, has cast tremendous doubt on the veracity of Hwang’s claims to have cloned human embryos and derived individualized embryonic stem cell lines from them by removing his name from the paper in which the “breakthrough” was announced. This is huge. Good for Schatten for having the integrity to do the right thing even though it hurts the therapeutic cloning cause in which he so deeply believes. (Science has refused, and is expressing continued confidence in Hwang’s work, although the chorus is growing for independent verification.)