Snuppy, We Hardly Knew Thee

We wrote previously that the peeling of the onion of the Korean stem cell controversy might result in questions about the second most holy cloned animal. And indeed, Snuppy's credentials are being questioned. It appears that 6 out of 11 of Snuppy's cells were taken forcibly from the dogs of subordinate lab techs working in the Hwang lab, two more were bought off the street by a veterinary hospital, for $1400, from desperate pet honors, each of whom was named as an author for the article but now wants to retract it, and the remaining three cells were made with a Xerox machine somewhere in between Pittsburgh and Seoul. Snuppy's master missed her flight to Korea and has been hiding in a basement in western Pennsylvania.

Nature's statement was that there is "sufficient uncertainty … for us to wish to remove any doubts over the Nature paper."