theraputic cloning? buddhist scientist says it's reincarnation

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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/17/science/17CONV.html?pagewanted=2&th>

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> HWANG I am Buddhist, and I have no philosophical problem with cloning. And

> as you know, the basis of Buddhism is that life is recycled through

> reincarnation. In some ways, I think, therapeutic cloning restarts the

> circle of life.

>

> Q. Professor Hwang, was there anything in your rural background that made

> for your interest in cloning?

>

> HWANG Yes. I took care of cows from early childhood on. To this day, I can

> communicate with cows without any conversation, just by looking, eye to

> eye. This is partly why I have been interested in animal cloning because I

> can see how it can solve a lot of problems for farmers. With cows for

> instance, some produce only milk, others only meat. In 1999, through

> cloning, our lab was able to produce a cow that is good for both — a kind

> of supercow.

>

> Then, in 2002, we succeeded in cloning miniature sterile pigs whose organs

> can be used for transplantation to humans. We collected the somatic cells

> from pigs and inserted some of the human immune gene into the pig's

> somatic cell. So with these successes behind us, the time seemed right to

> try therapeutic cloning to cure incurable human diseases like Parkinson's

> and spinal cord injuries.

>

> Q. To create this cloned embryo that was used for a new stem cell line, 16

> Korean women donated 242 human eggs to your project. How did you find

> these remarkable volunteers?

>

> HWANG In Korea like everywhere else there are young ladies who are curious

> about therapeutic cloning. Some heard about us and they contacted us with

> e-mail. Also, we sometimes gave lectures about our work. After we spoke,

> we received inquiries and we arranged meetings and discussed fully what

> egg donation meant. If they said yes, we enlisted them. We did physical

> and mental examinations. We asked if they understood what we were trying

> to do. We gave them a chance to change their minds.

>

> Q. You aren't the first biologists to try these human cloning experiments.

> What did you do differently from the others?

>

> HWANG We used a squeezing method when we extracted the nuclear material

> from the ovum. We did it with minimum damage to the egg, which isn't easy

> because human eggs are very, very sticky. Next, we used a different

> activation time to mimic the fertilization of the egg. We also used a

> special culture medium for growing the reconstructed egg.

>

> MOON Also, there is something special about Dr. Hwang's lab. It's

> something in our Korean culture. The micromanipulation that we did for the

> cloning, it's a very tedious job. But people from our part of the world

> are very patient, and that helped. Our researchers had an almost Zen-like

> sense of concentration; they could sit for 10 hours in one spot and

> carefully manipulate the eggs. It was almost like a meditation.

>

> HWANG I also think, quite seriously, that our Korean finger techniques

> helped. Koreans eat with metal chopsticks, which are very slippery. We are

> trained from an early age how to manage them.

>

> Q. What are the economics of this? Will you become rich?

>

> HWANG We have applied for a worldwide P.C.T. [Patent Cooperation Treaty]

> patent for the technique we developed and also the cloned human embryo

> stem cells. Sixty percent of the patent will be owned by the university.

> The remaining 40 percent will go to the other collaborators. Dr. Moon and

> I will not be participating because we are professors.

>

> Q. Are you refusing money so that your motives can never be questioned?

>

> MOON That's right. Korea is a country where respect for the professorship

> is a little bit different than in the West. Professor Hwang takes the

> honor, not the money.

>

> Q. Do you think you'll get a Nobel Prize?

>

> HWANG Not now. The way I understand it, if the younger generation

> accomplishes its task and takes what we have done further, then maybe.

> What we've done is a beginning step.

>