We live in very unethical times. The human cloning fraudster, Hwang Woo-suk, has hit it big with a new stem cell startup. From the AAAS story:
The scientist who once fraudulently claimed to have created embryonic stem cells matched to human patients and the one who really did it plan to conduct joint research, a Korean newspaper reported this morning. A Chinese regenerative medicine company will provide financial support, according to the account…
Hwang, in what is billed as an exclusive interview, now tells South Korea’s Dong-A Ilbo newspaper that he, Mitalipov, and Xiaochun Xu, CEO of Boyalife Group of Wuxi, China, have agreed to jointly work on the mechanisms of cloning. Boyalife, which has a number of stem cell– and regenerative medicine–related research and commercial efforts, will put up about $93 million.
One would think that science fraud would be a deal killer–even for someone who has successfully cloned animals. But not these days, and not this industry.
This confirms my admittedly heterodox view that human cloning is so inherently wrong and immoral that it eventually poisons everything it touches.