Dr. Schatten, one of the investigators who collaborated with Hwang Woo Suk on a the stem cell paper published in Science earlier this year, has requested that the journal remove his name from the paper. The journal declined the request. (Normile et al. "Korean University Will Investigate Cloning Paper. December 13th). The editors responded:
"No single author, having declared at the time of submission his full and complete confidence in the contents of the paper, can retract his name unilaterally, after publication, and while inquiries are still under way."
Hwang, Schatten and their colleagues wrote a landmark paper published in Science in May, 2005, claiming that they had produced 11 stem cell lines from patients afflicted with various diseases. The therapeutic clones were produced via somatic cell nuclear transfer, where scientists transfer the nuclear material from the somatic cells - in this case of patients - to egg cells, which divide and develop via the transferred DNA. The research purportedly improved on a method the lab used the previous year to produce a single stem cell line by decreasing the number of eggs used to produce one line from 246 to an average of 17.
Scientists and the media questioned the lab earlier this year on ethical grounds because the researchers reportedly procured egg cells from junior lab members. Next, questions arose about several photos published in the Science paper that appeared identical, and the journal and researchers claimed there was a copying error. An anonymous poster on a Korean site - bric.postech.ac.kr - (where you can read articles via Googles amazing but "BETA" - translation software) has been opining on the validity of the research. DNA fingerprinting photos were submitted to Science to clear up questions about the clones. The poster then observed that the peaks and noise in the fingerprinting photos of the cloned cell lines and the somatic cells looked too similar to be authentic. Teams in Korea, Europe and the U.S. are now examining the results more closely.
Gerald Schatten was previously involved with another research scandal and in that one he emerged unscathed. At the University of Wisconsin in the 1990's, he collaborated with Dr. Ricardo H. Asch. Schatten used eggs from Asch's infertility clinic for research("Researchers 'Duped' Over Use of Embryos Without Consent"; Nature 379, p. 756, Feb. 1996). The article notes that an audit of lab records indicated that Schatten was misled by Asch, who provided several hundred eggs or embryos to the Wisconsin research lab. Asch and two colleagues at the University of California ran fertility clinics at UC Davis and Irvine, and were accused of multiple medical and ethical indiscretions in 1995, including harvesting women's eggs for the purpose of selling them to other couples and for research.
Asch vehemently denied the allegations for many months before fleeing to Mexico. His colleague, Dr. Jose Balmaceda fled to Chile. A third researcher, Dr. Sergio Stone, was put on administrative leave with pay for five years by UC while the investigation and trial proceeded, until being fired in 2000. Schatten moved to Oregon Health and Sciences University where he continued his cloning quest, with budgetary, if not scientific success, while again working at the fertility center, before moving on to Pittsburgh.
