California Funds Korean Cloning

The CHA Regenerative Medicine Institute (CHA RMI), a Los Angeles-based affiliate of Korean firm CHA Biotech, received a $2.5 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Unlike these Koreans, CHA RMI is interested in human cloning. Their grant title: Establishment of Stem Cell Lines from Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer-Embryos in Humans.

CHA Biotech is owned by a Cha Kwang-Yul (alternately, Kwang-Yul Cha), who is picking up where Hwang Woo-Suk left off. The LA Times has more.

Dr. Kwang-Yul Cha, whose company also owns fertility clinics and a large hospital in Seoul, is listed as the primary author on a medical paper that appeared in December 2005 in the U.S. medical journal Fertility and Sterility.

But that paper appears to be nearly a paragraph-for-paragraph, chart-for-chart copy of a junior researcher's doctoral thesis, which appeared in a Korean medical journal nearly two years earlier, according to a Times review of both papers and the findings of a Korean medical society.

...

The current dispute involves the much more modest thesis of Dr. Jeong-Hwan Kim, 36. He showed that a simple blood test might be able to predict which women are at risk for premature menopause. The test would allow those women to have their eggs retrieved and frozen for later use if they wanted children.

...

Nearly a year ago, Kim notified Fertility and Sterility that he believed his thesis had been copied by Cha and his colleagues. But it wasn't until last week that editor in chief Dr. Alan DeCherney said he would recommend retracting Cha's article at an editorial board meeting in April. DeCherney also said he would seek to ban Cha and all of the listed authors from publishing in the journal for three years.

"I'm sure that it's plagiarism," DeCherney said.

The article points out that this is not Cha's first run-in with alleged impropriety. Not by a long-shot.

In 2001, Cha co-authored an article stating that prayer fromstrangers increased IVF success rates. One author later pulled his namefrom the paper, and another was sent to jail on (possibly unrelated)
fraud charges.

Cha is currently referring to himself as an M.D. in California,
against state law. Per Cha's resume, he received medical training inSouth Korea, but is not licensed with the state.

Cha's medical group purchased Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Centerin 2004. If the name sounds familiar, maybe you recall the story of ahospital van dumping a homeless paraplegic on skid row?

Another LA Times article notes
that Thomas Kim, medical director of the first commercial egg bank inthe US, seduced a client seeking fertility treatments.The egg bank'sname? CHA Fertility Clinic, a subsidiary of CHA's Biotech.

If this grantee claims any success, California, do not publicize it.
Wait. Take a deep breath. Make sure the results can be duplicated by atleast two independent labs before you applaud it. If you don't, you'llbe a laughing stock when Kwang-gate begins.

And next time you want to give away $2.5 million, let me know. I
wouldn't mind taking an extended trip to Washington, DC to educate ourCongress on achieving a cure for paralysis.

California Stem Cell Group Awards $75 Mln; Korea's CHA Included [Bloomberg]