Having spent 23 years in a wheelchair, Wall Street analyst Henry Stifel keeps a close eye on spinal cord research. And he says the latest scientific scandal in South Korea has not dimmed his hope that &to=http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/377/15126_treatment.html' target=_blank>stem cells may one day help people like him.
"Some research was discredited. It doesn't discredit all the research that's been achieved," said Stifel, who is quadriplegic.
Moira McCarthy Stanford of Plymouth, Massachusetts, whose 14-year-old daughter is diabetic and uses an insulin pump, had a more personal reaction to the news that South Korean researcher &to=http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/89/358/14985_bank.html' target=_blank>Hwang Woo-suk had fabricated results for a landmark 2004 stem-cell paper.
"It's kind of sad a scientist would do this to people like us," she said. But "I know so many scientists are out there who are honest and working hard to move this forward, that this (fraud) will all be a distant memory in a couple years."
Diabetes, spinal cord injury and Parkinson's disease are among the conditions scientists hope to treat someday by using embryonic stem cells. Officials of disease advocacy groups said Tuesday that they remained optimistic that stem cells will play a role in future treatment.
Some also said the Korean scandal shows stem cell work should be encouraged in the United States.
Hwang's fraud was revealed Monday night by an investigatory panel at Seoul National University, where Hwang claimed in 2004 his lab had cloned a human embryo and extracted stem cells from it.
That made headlines because such "therapeutic cloning" could lead to supplies of stem cells that are a genetic match for particular patients. If those cells could be turned into the appropriate tissue, it could theoretically be transplanted into patients as a treatment without fear of rejection.
But Hwang's announcement was a sham, the university panel found. (On the other hand, Hwang's separate claim last August _ the first cloning of a dog _ was legitimate, investigators said.) Last month, the same panel declared that last year's blockbuster paper by Hwang, in which he claimed he created 11 stem cell lines genetically matched to specific patients through embryo cloning, was also a fraud, reports AP.
O.Ch.
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