Stem Cell Scandal.
Face Transplants with Movie Deals.
Speed Kills
Speed kills. This warning is sage advice. Too bad it's confined to motor vehicle operation. It is badly needed in science. Consider two recent examples where the desire to race to be first has caused scientists to veer off the road and get into big, big trouble.
Last June, Hwang Woo Suk, a veterinary researcher at Seoul National University in South Korea, reported that he had made embryonic stem cells from human embryos derived from 11 people.
Now allegations are swirling around him that he cut corners in his desire to be the first to make stem cells from cloned human embryos.
Last month it was revealed that Hwang made his embryos from eggs obtained from women working in his lab. That reeks of coercion, since it would be nearly impossible for a young woman in a hierarchical Korean laboratory to say no to a request for her eggs.
Then, on Dec. 10, the news broke that the breakthrough reported in Hwang's initial paper in the journal Science might be fraudulent. Key measurements that would definitely prove that the stem cells Hwang said he made came from his cloned embryos now appear to be too good to be true.
Hwang and his group saw an opening when a lack of government funding in the United States kept the best American embryonic stem cell researchers on the sidelines. They ran to get ahead of the world competition. Now it seems they ran so fast they fell down. A colleague of Hwang said the research was falsified. Hwang stood by his research but asked that the Science article be withdrawn because of errors with accompanying photos.
A similar story can be told about the French team that recently announced the world's first face transplant. Jean-Michel Dubernard of the University of Lyon grafted a nose, chin and mouth taken from a brain-dead donor onto a 38-year-old mother of two from Valenciennes in northern France on Oct. 27. Dubernard and the French were racing against teams in the United States and England that were also planning face transplants. Again speed seems to have gotten a prominent researcher in big trouble.
British newspapers reported that the reason the recipient needed a face transplant is that she had tried to kill herself. London's Sunday Times says the woman acknowledged in a cellphone interview -- though she has denied it elsewhere -- that she took an overdose of sleeping pills during a fit of depression this past spring. As she lay nearly comatose on the floor, her own dog mauled her face.
Physically and emotionally, she may not prove up to the challenge of being the world's first face transplant recipient. But there is more. Three months before the operation she seems to have given a British filmmaker exclusive rights to her story. Who knows what motivated her to decide to go ahead with this risky operation?
Not only did suicide play a role in the life of the recipient, it has now been revealed that the donor used in the operation had committed suicide. So in their haste the French doctors wound up using a donor whose family must have been emotionally devastated when the request came to donate her face.
But the ethical problems did not end there. There is no evidence that the medical team appointed someone to act as the donor family or the recipient family's advocate. When you are asked about whether you want to be involved in the world's first face transplant, it is morally prudent to have advice from someone who does not care whether you say yes or no. Nor does the science appear to justify trying a face transplant just yet. Results in animals of face transplants have been limited and not particularly impressive. And transplants involving hands and limbs have also turned out poorly.
Certainly a case can be made for face transplants. There are those with oral cancer or burns or injuries for whom no other real option exists. But, in deciding to go first, the French group appears to have given less than adequate thought to who the donor should be, who the recipient should be and what scientific foundation should have been laid down before trying the surgery and more to who should get the movie rights.
These publicized scientific firsts prove more questions need to be asked about how fast researchers have been going when they announce their breakthroughs.
