Hwang Woo Suk "Egg" Count Updated

Here's the one and only report I've been able to find covering the revelation that more oocytes or "eggs" were used in the laboratory procedures under Korean veterinarian and dog cloner Hwang Woo Suk's supervision. The records in that lab were partially destroyed just aboutthe time that the scandal broke in December. In fact, the record-keeping was apparently so bad in the first place, that I doubt that anyone knows the truth or ever will.

From that Korean Times article:

Prosecutors said last Friday that Hwang received 2,236 ova extracted from 136 donors between November 2002 and December 2005 through four medical institutions collaborating with Hwang's research team.

The institutions that cooperated with Hwang include Hanyang University Medical Center, fertility clinic MizMedi Hospital, Jeil General Hospital and Hanna Women's Clinic.

In January, a fact-finding committee at Seoul National University (SNU) said Hwang's team amassed up to 2,061 eggs from 129 donors, far more than the 427 eggs Hwang's team had claimed to have used.

A month later, the National Bioethics Committee revealed Hwang gathered 2,221 eggs from 119 donors for his stem cell research from 2002 until last December, 160 more than reported by the SNU investigative panel.

The committee also concluded his research team ran into serious ethical problems with its ova procurement.

Last Friday, the prosecution indicted without detention Hwang on charges of fraud, embezzlement and breaches of the bioethics law, ending a five-month probe into the research fabrication scandal.

Prosecutors said he embezzled 2.8 billion won ($3 million) out of some 40 billion won in research funds for personal purposes and the illegal purchase of ova used in his experiments.
They also accused him of illegally paying some 38 million won to 25 women who provided ova for his research through Hanna Women's Clinic in the first eight months of 2005.

Meanwhile, Hanyang University Medical Center was found to have provided ova from its patients to Hwang's team without the consent of donors, violating the Korean bioethics law.

The center, which sent its researchers to collaborate on the experiments, provided a total of 121 human eggs to Hwang's team between April and November of last year.

Investigators discovered that 113 ova extracted from 72 patients between 2002 and 2003 were sent to Hwang's team without the consent of the donors.

Last month, two women who donated their eggs to Hwang's laboratory filed a lawsuit against the state and two medical centers, claiming they had not been informed about potential risks posed by the egg retrieval processes.

There were many stories reporting the indictment of the Korean veterinarian and dog cloner Hwang Woo Suk last week. No surprise that the data was falsified, that money was embezzeled and laundered to hide the embezzelment, or that some of the money was given to politicians and others. But, where are the rest of the stories about this waste and irresponsible behvior?