Schatten grant data still unclear
WASHINGTON - Lawmakers were unable to determine at a hearing Tuesday whether University of Pittsburgh scientist Gerald Schatten relied on fraudulent South Korean findings to win a $16.1 million federal grant and if the grant is being reconsidered.
U.S. Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., asked federal regulators whether they are reviewing the grant awarded to Schatten in September by the National Institutes of Health to launch an ambitious stem cell research program based in part on the since-discredited Korean work.
"Due to ... confidentiality constraints, I cannot admit or deny specifics of that," said federal Office of Research Integrity director Chris Pascal, testifying before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources.
The 18-member bipartisan subcommittee chaired by Souder has jurisdiction over the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the NIH.
The panel will wait until it receives information it has requested from the NIH to decide if and how to proceed with further examination into Schatten's grant, said J. Marc Wheat, staff director and chief counsel.
"If they gave a lot of money based on fraudulent research, that could be problematic," Wheat said.
Schatten, who heads the Pitt-affiliated Magee-Womens Research Institute in Oakland, co-authored what was heralded as a landmark paper published in the journal Science last June.
In the article, a team of researchers led by Seoul National University veterinarian Hwang Woo-Suk claimed to have custom designed stem cells for individual patients from cloned human embryos with promising efficiency.
This purported breakthrough raised hopes that scientists would soon develop powerful stem cell cures for diseases such as Parkinson's or diabetes.
A Korean academic panel determined in January that Hwang and possibly others faked the data for the paper, which Science later retracted. Hwang admitted for the first time yesterday to Korean criminal prosecutors that he helped to perpetrate the fraud, according to news reports.
Last month, a Pitt investigative panel ruled that Schatten likely did not know the Korean researchers falsified their data, but censured him for shirking his scientific responsibilities while seeking to profit from the high-profile research.
Souder asked at the hearing whether universities can be trusted to police their own scientists in cases of potential research misconduct when the institutions have a financial stake in the outcome of an investigation.
"It is true that an institution can have a natural preference for not finding research misconduct -- it can lead to embarrassment or loss of funds from the NIH," Pascal said. "But based on ORI's many years of experiences with institutions, we think most of them want to do a good job of finding out what's actually happened."
Schatten is probably the top recipient in the nation of federal grant money for embryonic stem cell research, including work with monkeys and other animals, said hearing witness Dr. James Battey Jr., who chairs the NIH Stem Cell Task Force.
Some independent experts have questioned whether Schatten should remain eligible to lead research projects and receive federal grants in the wake of the controversy.
Pitt officials have defended Schatten's $16.1 million, five-year grant, saying the award relied heavily on results he published about cloned monkey embryos -- not the Korean research.
"I have no reason to believe that the grants were not obtained appropriately and not being sustained appropriately," Dr. Arthur Levine, Pitt's medical school dean and senior vice chancellor for health sciences, said last week.
Schatten could not be reached for comment yesterday.
In 2005, the NIH allocated roughly $40 million for 154 projects related to human embryonic stem cells, Battey testified at the hearing.
Souder and several Republican lawmakers wondered whether events in Korea suggest the cloning field is fraught with inherent problems that can lead to fraud and the exploitation and coercion of women who donate their eggs for research.
"The incident is a siren warning against proceeding in these research areas without most cautiously examining the societal costs necessarily associated with it," Souder said.
Other legislators said the Korean scandal, while deplorable, should not be used as a reason to impose tighter restrictions on potentially promising human embryonic stem cell research in the United States.
Continued federal funding of this work will help to ensure rigorous oversight and ethical compliance, said subcommittee member U.S. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-District of Columbia.
"This is a national scientific issue," she said. "The burden is on the federal government to offer leadership and guidance."
