Hwang Forced Researcher to Donate Eggs

Korean TV station MBC Tuesday dealt another blow to the country's cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk, claiming he had forced his junior researcher to contribute eggs by using authorship as a carrot.

MBC made the claim in its investigative program, ``PD Notebook,'' which resumed after a four-week suspension caused by its aggressive news gatherings on Hwang's controversial stem cell research.

``Hwang's team used more than 1,600 eggs obtained from a total of 86 donors for their stem cell papers featured by the U.S. journal Science in 2004 and 2005,'' MBC producer Choi Seung-ho said.

Hwang claimed to have harvested the first-ever cloned embryonic stem cell line in a 2004 Science paper as well as having grown 11 patient-specific stem cell batches in a 2005 Science article.

The authenticity of both seminal exploits are under serious doubts and producers of MBC PD Notebook played a major role in bringing the truth to light.

``On the donor's list is Park Eul-soon, one of 15 co-authors of the 2004 paper. Park was urged to provide eggs by Hwang, who pledged to credit her with...