The newly opened Global Stem Cell Consortium is on hold following allegations that the famous Korean cloning researcher, Hwang Woo-suk, the "cloning king", crossed ethical boundaries to obtain human eggs for his research. The rumor first appeared that the researcher had used eggs from junior members of his lab in Nature (429, 3; 2004), but the recent announcement that University of Pittsburgh cloning researcher Gerald Schatten broke off ties with Hwang gives additional credibility to these original reports. Hwang's work has now been reportedly "thrown into an ethical cloud" that affects many organizations and researchers.
Some, like the Children's Neurobiological Solutions Foundation (CNS) are taking a wait-and-see stance. More, like Schatten and affiliated colleagues across in the U.S., are breaking ties with the consortium. The newest development will also affect governments' willingness to fund or participate in the cloning research, which has been stymied by these very same ethical issues. Science (subscription) quoted Hans Scholer of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Medicine in Germany in "Stem Cells: Collaborators Split Over Ethics Allegations", (Nov. 18, 2005 vol.310; 5751, p1100), who said that the German government would now hesitate before letting its scientists to collaborate on the cloning project: "One argument will be that if Hwang was dishonest with a collaborator, how dishonest will he be toward the public?"
