After a three-year moratorium on human stem cell research, South Korean officials gave the go-ahead to a new research project involving human eggs today (Apr. 29) provided that the research meets certain provisos. A national bioethics committee effectively banned research using human eggs in 2006 after Hwang Woo-Suk, a leading stem cell researcher formerly at Seoul National University who claimed to have created the first human stem cells from cloning, was shown to have manipulated and falsified his data. South Korean officials had not granted a single stem cell research license since then. But now, a team led by Chung Hyung-min at Seoul's Cha General Hospital has been granted approval to use human eggs on four conditions: The researchers must set up an Institutional Review Board to prevent fraud and bioethics violations, focus on lab animals to minimize the use of human eggs, secure renewed written consent from egg donors,...
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