Korean Stem Cells A Fraud

Is embryonic stem cell therapy the cold fusion of the 2000's? If South Korea has anything to do with it, yes.

The much-touted research at Seoul University that allegedly showed that you could put anyone's skin cell into an embryonic nucleus and create embryonic stem cell lines that were functional and ripe for miraculous medical exploitation has been shown to be a fraud -- officially, according to the University. The school's study shuts the door to any hope the research team may have held that their work would be vindicated.

Instead, it's been shown to be a cheat of cold fusion proportions.

Only two of the 11 claimed lines were found to be legit ... maybe. They could have been lifted from anywhere, and the university is now investigating that -- and the claim that a dog produced by the researchers is really a clone-puppy.

As Joe Palca at NPR reports:

"The scientific community thought [creating cloned embryonic stem cells from human donors] had been done. Now there is a great deal of doubt about that."

As with cold fusion, hope dies hard, and other scientific teams are still trying to do what the Koreans said they did, but didn't.

We are spared for the time being the ethical questions the research raised, and are pointed back, once again, to adult stem cell research as the better course.

See also:
Korean Stem Cell Crisis