The Return of Hwang?

What magnitude of transgression is needed to ruin a high-profile career? The bar seems to be pretty high. For example, the leading advocates for the current disastrous war of choice, a catastrophe now clearly based upon lies, have variously been promoted to Secretary of State, president of the World Bank, and Deputy National Security Advisor. The master of insider traders, Michael Milken is back, dispensing advice about how to improve the world. Even disgraced former US President Richard Nixon was gushingly eulogized as "an American hero."

So perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that stem cell and cloning researcher Hwang Woo Suk is laying the groundwork for a comeback. Sure, he may be known best for publishing falsified papers, unethically obtaining thousands of women's eggs (even from his own subordinates), and embezzling millions of dollars. Much like a pop group's reunion that no one really asked for, he's now got the old band back together, and they are rehearsing at an undisclosed location in the distant suburbs of Seoul. But can he churn out the hits like he used to? There are even hints they may have potential Top Ten singles in the can:

"There are many good research results that we want to boast about," Kim [Sue, one of Hwang's chief researchers] said, but declined to elaborate further. Papers are either being written or have been submitted to science journals for review, she said, and the lab hopes to have some published within a year.

Unfortunately, there are also hints that Hwang may try some of his old tricks, particularly improperly obtaining human eggs, by working around the law instead of breaking it. Hwang may be under less scrutiny, because his work is now privately funded and he might be seeking a new nation in which to establish a lab. But he's proposed to resurrect the idea of an international stem cell research consortium. The aim of the consortium, which may include a "U.S. biomedical firm," seems to be to acquire eggs - the same likely purpose the first time he advocated for such a consortium, just before his fall from grace.

Despite the fact that Hwang's team burned through over two thousand human eggs without success, his researcher Kim remains convinced that stem cell lines can be extracted from human clonal embryos - if only she and the rest of the team had access to eggs: "If we had been working on human eggs, we could have produced human stem cells. We are confident that we can do it now."