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Journalists with the MBC current affairs program ¡°PD Diary¡± tried to trick patients who donated somatic cells for Hwang Woo-suk¡¯s stem cell research into testifying against the geneticist, a member of the research team said Monday. He said journalists told patients Hwang¡¯s research results would be exposed as a fabrication and he would be arrested.
Through transferring the nuclei from somatic cells of patients with spinal cord injury, juvenile diabetes and a genetic immune deficiency, Hwang succeeded in yielding 11 immune-matched human embryonic stem cell lines. The results were published in Science.
Team members said the ¡°PD Diary¡± crew approached the family of one donor and tried to confirm that the donation took place. The family was frightened and asked researchers if anything had gone wrong. Team members also said the MBC journalists made some 20 calls a day to a researcher identified as Kim to pressure him to speak to them.
At the same time, the ¡°PD Diary¡± crew sowed mistrust in the team by telling them there was another whistleblower among them. The resulting insecurity was jeopardizing research, one member said. He urged MBC to come clean, saying if it was true that there was a mole, it meant someone within the institute, which has national security status, could leak important technology abroad.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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