HWANG LIED

COMMENTARY by Ed Nicholson

THEY SAY:

Bush lied.

I SAY:

Hwang lied.

THEY SAY:

Bush made up reports about Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) so that he could pursue his secret agenda of getting revenge on Saddam Hussein.

I SAY:

Hwang made up reports about advancements in Embryonic Stem-Cell Research (ESCR) so that the cloning industry could pursue their hidden agenda of receiving a future financial windfall from human cloning at American taxpayer expense.

THEY SAY:

Committing our troops in Iraq is misguided. The war in Iraq is not winnable. Our war against terror is better served in other pursuits. Precious resources should be devoted in other ways in the war on terror.

I SAY:

Investing in ESCR is misguided as well as unethical. ESCR shows no signs of success. Scarce research dollars should go instead to Adult Stem-Cell Research (ASCR), which is not only ethical, but is much more promising in finding medical cures than ESCR.

THEY SAY:

Young people in our armed forces are dying because Bush lied.

I SAY:

Public money was earmarked for ESCR after Hwang’s fake advancements were publicized. Now, more young human beings in the embryonic stage of development are contracted to die in laboratories in the U.S. because Hwang lied.

THEY SAY:

More innocent human beings (soldiers) are going to lose their lives the longer we stay in Iraq.

I SAY:

More innocent human beings (human embryos) are going to lose their lives the longer we advance ESCR.

THEY SAY: Embryonic Stem-Cell Research is good science.

I SAY: Embryonic Stem-Cell Research is mad science.

As reported by the Family Research Council:

“The Washington Post calls this widening scandal ‘one of the biggest scientific frauds in memory.’ That story may never be fully told. The journal Science, which had trumpeted Hwang's research, now says it will retract his ‘landmark’ May 2005 paper on embryonic stem cells. Note the word--landmark. This is liberals' word-of-choice for some really big, really good thing, as in ‘the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling.”

A week later, FRC reports, “It Get’s Worse”:

“‘[Stem cell research is] years behind where scientists thought it was.’ That's the dire judgment on the latest disclosures from South Korea. Dr. Hwang Woo Suk not only did not develop patient-specific stem cell lines using human cloning, but he never derived stem cells from a cloned embryonic human. An eight-month study by Hwang's peers at Seoul National University concluded that DNA studies on preserved stem cells failed to correspond with published photographs. They
were ‘fakes.’ ‘Hwang basically lied to the Korean people and scientific world,’ said Dr. Chung Myung Hee, the chairman of the review panel. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology of Worcester, Mass., said ACT will re-enter the race to clone a human being. ‘The United States has a second chance to do it right and win,’ he said. Once again, it seems scientists are not drawing the obvious lessons from this episode. Instead of exploiting the actual and potential benefits of adult stem cells, they are determined to pursue this destructive and fundamentally unethical research agenda.”