[Editorial] Bioethics Commission Must Not Waver

The National Bioethics Commission has announced it is going to consider a revision to related legislation that would prohibit research of somatic cell nucleus transfer technology. Hwang Woo Suk and his team of researchers used some 2,221 eggs and yet failed to create stem cells, they committed immoral activities by purchasing eggs and violating research ethics, and they even fabricated an article in an academic journal. That being the case it does make sense that the commission wants to see the law revised just a year after it was last amended. That is only natural if there is no possibility of treating incurable diseases in sight and if all that is left is the catastrophic possibility of human cloning.

However, the commission needs to guard against the possibility of itself being part of the problem. In addition to problems at the research level, a main factor in the Hwang Woo Suk affair was bias at the government level. The whole country forgot to consider other possibilities, all while spending all its energy on supporting Hwang. The commission, too, was swept away by the mood and failed to do what it was supposed to. Frozen embryo stem cell research that was recognized around the world is getting a cold reception as a result.

The usefulness of somatic cell nucleus transfer and the superior skills possessed by Korean researchers must not be overlooked. Seoul National University's inquiry committee confirmed that Hwang and his team had reached the blastocyst level. The United Kingdom, Italy, and Belgium are wholeheartedly investing in the same research.

What the commission needs to be doing is making the system so that it prevents a similar series of events. Each institution's ethics review committee needs to exist more than just in name in order to keep ethical control over laboratories, and ethical guidelines on extracting eggs need to be stricter. Science must not disregard ethics, but ethics must not try to completely control science, either. Prejudice is always dangerous.

The Hankyoreh, 4 February 2006.

[Translations by Seoul Selection]