When, in February, a South Korean team announced that it had derived stem cells from a cloned human embryo, its achievement was heralded as an important step on the road to 'therapeutic cloning'. But the research is now clouded by nagging questions about the source of the key resource for the experiment: human egg cells. Korean citizens'-rights activists and bioethicists are pressing the team,' led by Woo Suk Hwang and Shin Yong Moon of Seoul National University, to prove that the recruitment of women volunteers followed ethical guidelines. Natures enquiries have also revealed troubling inconsistencies ― in particular over whether the donors included junior members of the research team.
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