Author Archives: Nature Medicine Editor

Hwang’s back!

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Korea’s disgraced cloning researcher, Woo-suk Hwang is apparently back in the lab, according to an exclusive from the Associated Press.

The article says Hwang and 30 of his former colleagues have set up shop outside Seoul and are hard at work deriving stem cell lines from pig and cow embryos. One of the scientists is quoted as saying what a pity it is that they can’t get their hands on human eggs—to which my response is “Chuh!”

In case you’ve forgotten, Hwang is the scientist who sucecssfully hoodwinked the whole world into believing first that his team had successfully derived embryonic stem cells from a cloned human embryo and then that they had created 11 patient-specific stem cell lines from people with different diseases. And they claimed to have done all this using eggs from willing volunteers, 242 eggs the first time and 185 the second.

It was all a big scam, of course. Much to everyone’s utter shock, there were no such cell lines. And and as it turned out later, Hwang had in fact used more than 2,000 eggs, and in many cases had either paid, duped or coerced women—including two graduate students in his lab—into donating them.

What I’m still shocked by is these 30 scientists who are still putting their faith in him. But maybe I shouldn’t be. Hwang was so good at seeming like the humble man of science, even playing the Asian card at times, that no one suspected a thing for years.

My colleague at Nature, David Cyranoski, first reported the ethical violations in May 2004, a year and a half before Hwang’s collaborator Gerald Schatten raised an alarm. During that time, most scientists believed that Nature had cooked up the allegations over jealousy that Hwang had chosen to publish in Science, a theory Hwang himself had floated. But as I reported in May 2005, some people in Korea saw him as a two-faced manipulator who “sells himself very well,” long before the West caught on.

It’s disturbing to see that Hwang still hasn’t given up on human eggs and cloning. Here’s hoping the government makes sure he he has to stick to pigs and cows.

Bushwhacked on stem cell research

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For the second time in less than a year, US President Bush has vetoed a bill that would have lifted a ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

Bush announced his veto last Wednesday saying, “If this legislation became law, it would compel American taxpayers for the first time in our history to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos. I made it clear to Congress and to the American people that I will not allow our nation to cross this moral line.”

Whether he likes it or not, that already happens on a regular basis.

A 2004 study by the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Bioethics found that nearly all in vitro fertilization clinics harvest more embryos than they’ll need and about 80% of the clinics dispose of unwanted embryos—most by simply dumping the extras in the biological waste bin.

It’s too bad decisions about what happens to an embryo are being made by the government and not by the women and men who are most connected—both emotionally and genetically—to those embryos. According to a survey released in last week’s Science, 60% of couples who have embryos stored at fertility clinics said they would willingly donate them for stem cell research. A Gallup poll conducted in mid May also found that 64% of Americans think embryonic stem cell research is morally acceptable.

Whether these taxpayers are funding stem cell research or not, they’ve already made it clear that they’re ready to cross Bush’s moral line. Listening, President Bush?

Posted on behalf of Cassandra Willyard, news intern for Nature Medicine

Does immigration hurt American science?

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The US government is spending a lot of money training the next generation of PhDs so that the country can remain a leader in science. Yet each year, many American-born scientists are leaving the lab, perhaps because of the long hours, low salaries or low expectations of career advancement.

Why are the working conditions so bad? Blame the foreigners, says an anonymous American scientist in an online Science report last week.

This scientist complained that his poor working conditions are exacerbated when foreign scientists take similar jobs, and work longer hours for less money than he may be willing to do. Also, he argues, because there are so many foreign scientists wanting to work in the US, and universities have no limit on the number of scientists they can bring in, the overabundance of foreign labor keeps his salary low and discourages him from sticking with science.

I find it shocking that this scientist is blaming foreigners for the problems with American science. It would be much more reasonable for him to blame the US government for setting the typical postdoc’s salary so low, or for cutting the NIH budget, despite its supposed desire to keep America competitive globally.

In fact, according to the latest National Science Foundation survey, the number of American students enrolling in grad school for science and engineering is higher than ever. And the number of foreign students, perhaps because of visa problems, is dropping. Many American companies are actually lobbying for an increase in temporary visas so that more foreigners can enter the scientific workforce—a change that Congress is currently considering.

As we said in our June editorial, governments should set aside funding specifically for young American scientists. I also think that science can only benefit from diverse viewpoints, be they of Americans of all races, as we said in May, or of foreign scientists who can bring their perspectives and training to scientific problems.

The solution to this is not, and should not be, to limit foreign scientists from coming in. What do you think? Should Congress increase—or decrease—the number of visas issued to foreign scientists?

Posted on behalf of Eva Chmielnicki, Associate Editor, Nature Medicine

Needed: overhaul of AIDS programs

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Last week’s Nature carried a fascinating review of two new books that take an unsparingly critical look at the world’s response to the AIDS epidemic.

The first, James Chin’s The AIDS Pandemic: The Collision of Epidemiology with Political Correctness, argues that flawed mathematical models have exaggerated the scale of the epidemic. Chin’s idea, which as we’ve reported has been gaining traction, is that tracking infection rates in pregnant women falsely inflates the numbers. Chin goes on to say that UNAIDS continues to support the bigger numbers because, among other things, it helps bring in donor money. That I can believe.

India was one of the first places where the numbers are lower than predicted by the mathematical models, but I’m not sure I agree with Chin that India’s epidemic won’t be as grave as the UN predicts it will be. Just last week, the government reported an alarming increase in prevalence in two Indian states. Based on my experience reporting on AIDS in India I think the numbers are likely to be much higher, not lower, than the ones we see reported.

The second book, Helen Epstein’s The Invisible Cure: AIDS in Africa, argues that indigenous efforts, particularly in reducing the average number of sexual partners, and not UNAIDS-sponsored methods, have been the most effective in curbing the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

The review is worth reading in its entirety, not least because it’s written by Stephen Lewis and his colleague Paula Donovan. Lewis, who was until December the UN special envoy for AIDS in Africa, is one of the most charismatic and genuine men I’ve ever met. When I interviewed him last year for a profile, his eyes repeatedly welled up when he talked about AIDS in Africa. I suspect he also has a lot to say about the UN, where he was not particularly popular because of his outspoken views. Now there’s a book I’m dying to read.

Good reason TB nervous

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By now, you’ve all heard about Andrew Speaker, the man who brought extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis to full-blown US attention.

The case is undeniably bizarre. Man has deadly infection, health officials try in vain to get him to stop flying, he puts hundreds of passengers at risk despite being on a so-called “no-fly” list, a customs official lets him in because he doesn’t look sick… oh, and most bizarrely of all, his father-in-law is a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention specializing in, wait for it, TB.

My first response was to think that the US was over-reacting. After all, XDR-TB has been found everywhere in the world. What’s so special about this one case? And it’s not as if the US is teeming with HIV-infected individuals, who are most at risk of catching TB. The reports all said too that his wife hadn’t become infected despite presumably spending lots of time with her husband.

But then the newspapers started detailing the many missteps that led to Speaker’s dangerous jaunts across the Atlantic. Now I, and no doubt every health official in the world, am wondering how we can ever hope to sucecssfully contain something like a flu pandemic, if we can’t get one guy to stay put. I’m not really for the idea of quarantining people. When SARS hit, some governments went a little 1984-ish nutso with nonstop surveillance and what-have-you. But I can’t argue that in the end, that’s what stopped SARS in its tracks, nor that most models show that containing the first few infections will be key in stopping a flu pandemic.

What I think we need is some updated quarantine laws, that make sense and take into account individual liberties. But even before that, I hope governments quickly learn how to stop infected people from putting everyone around them at risk.

No periods. Fullstop.

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If you could take a pill that completely eliminates your periods, would you?

Turns out the answer is rather emotional for many people. I say people because some men seem to have strong feelings about it too (as they do about many things that affect only women).

Most contraceptive pills entail 21 days of hormones, followed by 7 days of placebo. What follows is a period only in name, since women don’t actually ovulate while taking the pill. This fake period was designed into the pill when it was first introduced in 1960 so as not to freak women out too much.

This month, the FDA is evaluating Wyeth’s Lybrel, with which women would take hormones for a full year or longer (Women taking Seasonale, available now, still have 4 periods a year), remaining period-free throughout. And this is getting many experts riled up: those who think it might be unsafe, yes, but also those who argue that it is culturally dangerous—as in, it redefines femininity! Ahem.

Last year, I summarized the pros and cons of pills like Lybrel for the mainstream magazine Women’s Health, but briefly: the new pill could be healthier, because it cuts down on the hundreds of periods women now have on average as compared with about 50 or so not too long ago. On the other hand, we don’t really know what the long-term consequences might be.

So, what would you choose?

Science on trial

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It’s always frightening when matters of science are settled in a court of law. And a relief when reason prevails.

Last week, an Australian judge declared that yes, HIV does exist and that it causes AIDS.

The criminal case was filed against a HIV-positive man, Andre Chad Parenzee, for knowingly exposing his sexual partners to the virus. In his defense, he maintained that “the existence of HIV has not been proven” and that “there is no scientific evidence that AIDS is caused by a unique infectious agent.”

The case dragged on for months and although it wasn’t covered much outside the US, did create waves in Australia. Robert Gallo, who established the link between HIV and AIDS in 1984, appeared (by videolink) for the prosecution and was grilled by the defense about his research and his notorious squabble with French virologist Luc Montagnier. AIDS denialism has its supporters even among scientists and the dissident Perth Group, led by two Australian doctors, appeared as “expert witnesses” for the defense.

Parenzee had been convicted on three counts of endangering lives and had appealed. Justice John Sulan said last week that the Perth Group witnesses lacked credibility and threw out the appeal.

The two doctors continue to be employed by the Royal Perth Hospital, although AIDS Truth, a loosely banded group of scientists and activists, and other are calling for their dismissal. As I’ve written here before, AIDS denialism has serious consequences in some parts of the world and is not simply an academic debate. It’s time Australian scientists joined these activists in making sure science prevails.

What dangers lurk in your lab?

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The Israeli health ministry released a rather sobering study yesterday: apparently, women who work in a lab are at a 26% higher risk of developing certain cancers.

The scientists are careful to avoid saying anything about cause and effect — they didn’t discover links to any particular chemicals that might be the trigger, for example. But there is a convincing correlation. The study took into account 9,000 hospital, health fund and university lab workers who had worked in the labs for 20 years or more, according to this news article.

Depending on the kind of lab they worked in, the women seemed to be at higher risk of breast cancer, melanoma, lip cancer (that one I find a bit strange, I must admit) and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but at lower risk of lung cancer (which also I find strange).

Because of the findings, the health ministry began organizing courses on lab safety. Good news is, the researchers say, the study was conducted over the 80s and 90s, when conditions were much worse than they are today, so women working in labs today are probably safer.

Do you buy that?

Trouble in the HIV field

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When I went to the HIV vaccine meeting in Whistler last month, I heard some rather disturbing tales of people upset at the NIH. Some of the behind the scenes complaining I wrote about here. The rest became a news story about conflicts between HIV scientists and the NIH that runs in our May issue.

Before I wrote it, some scientists privately asked me not to write it, saying it would only stir up more trouble in the field. Others assumed—wrongly—that the story would be based on the complaints of only a few disgruntled researchers. But in fact, the discontentment is widespread, and CHAVI, the NIH’s HIV vaccine project, is perhaps unfairly bearing the brunt.

Even those who have little to do with HIV vaccines seem to be aware of the swirling bitterness. It’s understandable that CHAVI is stirring up resentment when established scientists are having to downsize their labs and young researchers are giving up on science, says Paul Bieniasz, who works at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York.

Bieniasz serves as chair of an NIH study section on AIDS molecular and cellular biology, so he has seen first hand the effect of the tightening budget on the peer review process. Like many others I quoted when CHAVI was first launched, he doesn’t believe sinking $350 million into one project is the way to solve the vaccine challenge. But unlike most of the people I tried to speak to for the most recent article, he was willing to go on the record.

“What if they’re (CHAVI is) wrong?” he says. “People have to speak out, we shouldn’t be living in an environment of fear.”

So… how about it? Here’s your chance to break out of the environment of fear…

The malaria dance

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Have you seen this picture?

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That’s President Bush, dancing at a benefit for Malaria Awareness Day. The picture is priceless, but I’ll restrain myself. This is once I can’t fault the administration too much.

In 2005, Bush launched the President’s Malaria Initiative which has, among other things, helped support the use of DDT in many African countries.

Yesterday, Africa Fighting Malaria (AFM), a NGO that helped bring DDT back, scored donor countries on their efforts fighting malaria. On their scorecard, the US ranks above everyone else, getting an impressive B+. Considering most other countries got themselves big, fat Fs that’s really good.

Things weren’t always so rosy, of course. In fact, before AFM and others took the US Agency for International Development to task, the agency was spending about 7% of its budget on actual interventions. the rest went to “other” costs. After Congress intervened, things at USAID have improved dramatically and they’re now working closely with AFM.

But that still leaves all the other donors, who are—litreally—failing in their efforts to fight malaria.

For the purposes of the scorecard, those countries “got an F because they never even responded,” AFM’s Richard Tren told me yesterday at a fundraiser in New York for the NGO.

Maybe it’s time to rustle up pictures of those leaders.