Hwang Woo-suk: The man who cloned first Dog is back to fame

Hwang Woo-suk is a South Korean scientist and researcher, best known for creating Snuppy, the world’s first cloned dog.

He was a professor of theriogenology and biotechnology at Seoul National University. He was a national hero in South Korea till 2006, when some of his research into creating human stem cells from a cloned embryo was found to be faked and he was dismissed from the Seoul National University in 2006. But his work for creating Snuppy, the world’s first cloned dog, in 2005 has been verified by experts and authorities. He was also jailed for 2 years on charges of embezzlement and bioethics issues. Recently he made news by unveiling eight cloned coyotes (Small wolf species) in a project sponsored by a provincial government. He delivered the clones to a wild animal shelter at Seoul. Under a joint project with the province to clone wild animals, Hwang took cells from the skin of a coyote and transplanted their nuclei into a dog’s eggs from which the canine nucleus had been removed.

Hwang shot to fame in 2004 when he published a paper in the US journal Science claiming to have created the world’s first stem-cell line from a cloned human embryo. But his reputation was tarnished in November 2005 by allegations that he had violated medical ethics by accepting human eggs from his own researchers. In January 2006 an investigative team ruled that his findings were faked and said he had produced no stem cells of any kind.

Month: Current Affairs - December, 2011