South Korean researchers at the center of cloning debate

By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter

	DEAN RUTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES Researchers Woo Suk Hwang, left, and Shin Yong Moon answer questions at a Seattle press conference.
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Woo Suk Hwang is a professor of veterinary medicine who has cloned more than 40 cows and pigs. He is a Coca-Cola-sipping Buddhist workaholic whose wife's biggest fear was that his work in human embryonic cloning would leave them with even less time together.

Together, these two longtime friends are the leaders of South Korea's research team that made history last week in announcing the first successful efforts to clone human embryos. And they now find themselves in the middle of a global debate over the potential — and ethics — of this new biotechnology.

They came to Seattle to attend the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Last week's announcement of the work, which went through a rigorous peer review, gave them their first uncomfortable taste of fame as they faced an international press corps.

In an interview with The Seattle Times, Hwang and Moon were quick to concede that their work has opened up an ethical frontier.

"There is a question of when life starts," Moon said. "We have always had the idea that life begins after fertilization — by sperm and the egg. But cloning is a totally new idea.

"We have no definition for cloned human beings ... We try to do this work for the improvement of human well-being, but we always try to do our best to listen to the opinion of others."

The technology could eventually be used to create tissues to treat diabetes, Alzheimer's and other incurable diseases, helping millions of people around the world. And the scientists say they have received thousand of e-mails, most in favor of their work.

Embryos are normally created by uniting egg and sperm. These scientists used a reconstructed egg absent any sperm to clone an embryo. It grew to a cluster of cells known as a blastocyst, which is the stage that fertility clinics might insert into a womb.

	AP This undated microscopic photo shows cloned human embryos, each in the eight-cell stage. The photo was released last week by Seoul National University.

The cloned embryos were then abandoned after the production of the stem cells, which could eventually become the building blocks for new disease treatments. And the technique has a brought a backlash from some politicians and religious leaders who believe that the human embryos deserve protection and that the research should be banned.

Hwang and Moon have committed to stop cloning human embryos for stem-cell production while the South Korean government works to establish new regulations for such research.

And Hwang said his experience producing cloned animals that were born with gross deformities has convinced the team that the process should be used only to try to cure diseases — never to create human babies.

When cloning cows and pigs, Hwang found that roughly 30 percent suffered from deformities that included heart defects, livers fivefold larger than normal and brain abnormalities.

"Reproductive cloning (in humans) must be prohibited by law — it is public common sense," Hwang said.

While their collaboration on the embryo cloning began less than two years ago, Hwang and Moon have known each other for more than decade from their work at Seoul National University. During the interview, as they recounted each other's quirks, they occasionally giggled like schoolboys.

It was the 51-year-old Hwang who first decided that the two friends should team up to try to clone human embryos.

Humble beginnings

	Woo Suk Hwang

Hwang said he grew up in a small village, the son of a farmer. Though his father died when he was 5, Hwang's mother encouraged him to attend a university. He did, and over the years he gained an international reputation for his work in animal cloning.

Among friends and colleagues, he is known for an obsessive commitment to work.

At home in Seoul, Hwang typically rises at about 4 a.m. After a visit to the public baths and a session of Korean-style yoga, he arrives at the office at 6 a.m. for a day filled with lab work, visits to farms to check on cloned animals, and other meetings. He usually returns home about midnight. And he works that schedule for days on end.

"Our laboratory has no Saturday-Sunday holiday. I work seven days a week," said Hwang.

His lead research partner, Moon, 56, grew up in Seoul, the son of a high-school principal who pushed his son to be a professor. Moon's postgraduate work included three years in the mid-'80s at the Jones Institute of Reproductive Medicine in Norfolk, Va., where he delved into the then-controversial realm of uniting human egg and sperm outside the womb.

"We had a lot of discussion about that," Moon said. "I always considered ethics very important."

	Shin Yong Moon

Moon, however, said he did not hesitate when his friend Hwang in 2002 pitched the new collaboration on human cloning of embryonic cells at a 7 a.m. breakfast meeting.

"I say 'Yes sir,' " Moon recalls. "Because I know him very well. If he wanted to do something, he always do it very well."

But Moon said his wife had doubts.

"She is a very sincere Christian, and so sometimes, she told me, 'Please read the Bible, you'd better consult a priest,' " Moon said.

Moon said he listened to what his wife had to say but never felt there were religious problems with his work.

Human-egg research

Moon and Hwang lead a group of some 30 scientists. Most of the research has involved human eggs, with the original nucleus withdrawn using a very fine glass needle. Another nucleus from a cell outside the egg is then inserted.

But at one point, researchers thought it might be possible to trigger the cloning of a human nucleus inserted into a cow's egg that had been cleaned of its own nucleus.

The idea was to clone an embryo without harvesting eggs from human donors. But the researchers said there were problems and that effort was dropped.

They have come up with other limitations. So far, they have been able to clone only cells from women. And it would likely be necessary to clone a male's cells to create tissues and treatments that would be of use to men.

But the researchers said they have undertaken a limited number of trials, and are hopeful that male cells eventually will be cloned.

Tomorrow, they are scheduled to give a presentation at the AAAS Seattle conference. Then they will fly back to Seoul for press conferences and a new round of media interviews.

That prospect appeared to trouble Hwang.

"I want to start my work again," he said.

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company