For men who had just thrown a giant ethical bomb into the world of science, Dr. Woo Suk Hwang and Dr. Shin Yong Moon were dashing about Seattle last week in a remarkably relaxed mood.
Dr. Hwang, 51, and Dr. Moon, 56, faculty members at Seoul National University in South Korea, had announced at a news conference here at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that they had successfully cloned a human embryo and extracted a stem cell line from it.
Some ethicists were alarmed by the news. ''The age of human cloning has apparently arrived; today, cloned blastocysts for research, tomorrow cloned blastocysts for baby making,'' wrote Dr. Leon R. Kass, chairman of President Bush's Council on Bioethics. ''In my opinion, and that of the majority of the council, the only way to prevent this from happening here is for Congress to enact a comprehensive ban or moratorium on all human cloning.''
But Dr. Hwang, a veterinary medical researcher, and Dr. Moon, an obstetrician, were quite calm. They drank Cokes at the Space Needle and took photographs of the journalists who interviewed them. ''This is a fantastic moment,'' Dr. Hwang, the project's principal investigator, said.
''If I'd known I was going to be interviewed this much, I would have practiced my English much harder,'' added Dr. Moon, who learned some of his English in the 80's when he studied in vitro fertilization at the Jones Institute of Reproductive Medicine in Norfolk, Va.
The men say they are close friends. For years, Dr. Hwang (rhymes with song) has been making headlines in South Korea by cloning cows and pigs. Eighteen months ago, he approached Dr. Moon and asked him to join his research team; Dr. Moon's work in in vitro fertilization, he said, would greatly aid his efforts at human cell cloning.
''Therapeutic cloning is not really a medical doctor's job; it's a research doctor's job,'' Dr. Moon said. ''Professor Hwang's lab is really fantastic. It's known as the 'cloning academy' or 'the power plant for cloning.' ''
Dr. Hwang added: ''It's a power plant where we want to help solve some incurable human diseases.''
Q.
Leon R. Kass, the bioethics adviser to President Bush, said that he
would like to see your type of research banned in the United States.
What is your reaction?
WOO SUK HWANG -- Our goal has never
been to create cloned human babies, but to find the causes of incurable
diseases and to offer a new window for cures.
SHIN YONG MOON
-- Professor Hwang and I have called for a ban on reproductive cloning.
We don't want people using our techniques to make human beings. We urge
every nation to prepare a law as soon as possible to prevent human
cloning. As a scientist, I think reproductive cloning should be banned.
Q. What do you think would happen to American science if all cloning were banned?
MOON
-- If all human cloning will be prohibited here, that would be a
problem for American science. Stem cell research [which cloning
facilitates] is very important for understanding the basic science of
human development. And it is also very important for new drug
evaluations. So biotechnology development -- not all of it, but some --
would be delayed and hindered in the United States.
Q. Do you have problems with your own government over your work?
HWANG
-- I can answer your question like this: If Korea were to prohibit
therapeutic cloning research, we would have to go to other countries
where it is permitted -- Singapore, mainland China, maybe Great
Britain. But my hope is that the Korean government will give us the
license to do this kind of research. If they don't, we will move.
Right now we are stopping our work for a short while and thinking about what we shall do next. We'd like to discuss this with our government. We'd like to have their confidence on this kind of research. Then we'll start again.
You know, almost half of our research team is
Christian, including Dr. Moon, who is Methodist. At the lab, we have
discussed why we have to do this work. We have asked ourselves, Is
there any way to achieve the treatment of some incurable diseases
without therapeutic cloning? The answer is, It is a scientist's
responsibility to do this research because it is for a good purpose.
Q. What is the religious tradition you come from, Professor Hwang?
HWANG
-- I am Buddhist, and I have no philosophical problem with cloning. And
as you know, the basis of Buddhism is that life is recycled through
reincarnation. In some ways, I think, therapeutic cloning restarts the
circle of life.
Q. Professor Hwang, did you grow up in a well-to-do family?
HWANG
-- No. We were very poor. My hometown is in a very isolated rural area.
When I was an infant, there was the Korean War, and when I was 5, my
father died. My mother had to take care of six of us, alone. And in the
years after the Korean War, the general status of rural people was
very, very difficult. My academic background started in a rural
elementary school, but my university was Seoul National University, one
of the most famous in Korea.
MOON -- Let me explain more because Professor Hwang and I are of a similar age, though I come from a middle-class background.
Immediately
after the Korean War, we had nothing to eat or drink. The first words I
ever spoke in English were, ''Hello, give me a chocolate!'' This is
what we said to the G.I.'s. Everybody suffered from hunger. We had
nothing. The only way to succeed in life was to study very hard. So
Professor Hwang got a good education by being a really hard-working
young man. He'd get up at 4:30 every morning and work till midnight. He
still does that.
Q. Professor Hwang, was there anything in your rural background that made for your interest in cloning?
HWANG
-- Yes. I took care of cows from early childhood on. To this day, I can
communicate with cows without any conversation, just by looking, eye to
eye. This is partly why I have been interested in animal cloning
because I can see how it can solve a lot of problems for farmers. With
cows for instance, some produce only milk, others only meat. In 1999,
through cloning, our lab was able to produce a cow that is good for
both -- a kind of supercow.
Then, in 2002, we succeeded in
cloning miniature sterile pigs whose organs can be used for
transplantation to humans. We collected the somatic cells from pigs and
inserted some of the human immune gene into the pig's somatic cell. So
with these successes behind us, the time seemed right to try
therapeutic cloning to cure incurable human diseases like Parkinson's
and spinal cord injuries.
Q. To create this cloned embryo
that was used for a new stem cell line, 16 Korean women donated 242
human eggs to your project. How did you find these remarkable
volunteers?
HWANG -- In Korea like everywhere else there are
young ladies who are curious about therapeutic cloning. Some heard
about us and they contacted us with e-mail. Also, we sometimes gave
lectures about our work. After we spoke, we received inquiries and we
arranged meetings and discussed fully what egg donation meant. If they
said yes, we enlisted them. We did physical and mental examinations. We
asked if they understood what we were trying to do. We gave them a
chance to change their minds.
Q. You aren't the first biologists to try these human cloning experiments. What did you do differently from the others?
HWANG
-- We used a squeezing method when we extracted the nuclear material
from the ovum. We did it with minimum damage to the egg, which isn't
easy because human eggs are very, very sticky. Next, we used a
different activation time to mimic the fertilization of the egg. We
also used a special culture medium for growing the reconstructed egg.
MOON
-- Also, there is something special about Dr. Hwang's lab. It's
something in our Korean culture. The micromanipulation that we did for
the cloning, it's a very tedious job. But people from our part of the
world are very patient, and that helped. Our researchers had an almost
Zen-like sense of concentration; they could sit for 10 hours in one
spot and carefully manipulate the eggs. It was almost like a
meditation.
HWANG -- I also think, quite seriously, that our
Korean finger techniques helped. Koreans eat with metal chopsticks,
which are very slippery. We are trained from an early age how to manage
them.
Q. What are the economics of this? Will you become rich?
HWANG
-- We have applied for a worldwide P.C.T. [Patent Cooperation Treaty]
patent for the technique we developed and also the cloned human embryo
stem cells. Sixty percent of the patent will be owned by the
university. The remaining 40 percent will go to the other
collaborators. Dr. Moon and I will not be participating because we are
professors.
Q. Are you refusing money so that your motives can never be questioned?
MOON
-- That's right. Korea is a country where respect for the professorship
is a little bit different than in the West. Professor Hwang takes the
honor, not the money.
Q. Do you think you'll get a Nobel Prize?
HWANG
-- Not now. The way I understand it, if the younger generation
accomplishes its task and takes what we have done further, then maybe.
What we've done is a beginning step.
