Politics
Wednesday March 15, 2006
Dolly Cloner Now Says Others Did Most of the Work, Award May be Withdrawn
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by Hilary White
EDINBURGH, March 15, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Ian Wilmut, the creator of Dolly the cloned sheep and the world’s foremost expert in human cloning, could be stripped of a prestigious international award worth £70,000.
The Frankfurt-based Paul Ehrlich Foundation is considering recalling the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize for medical research awarded to Wilmut, after the British cloning expert admitted his research may not be entirely his own.
While it is understood that all medical research is a communal effort with findings building upon findings, Wilmut has admitted that he neither developed the technology nor conducted the vital experiments to create Dolly, even though his name appeared on the papers as lead researcher. Wilmut made the admission at an employment tribunal in Edinburgh in which he is accused of the racial harassment and bullying of an Asian colleague.
A spokesman for the Foundation said, "It has never happened before that an award has been taken away. It is a very complicated issue. It is not about faking results or data, for example, and the question of who takes credit for what and how much credit they should take is a very complex one and there's no simple answer."
Wilmut is the golden child of British genetic researchers. Thus far, his every request has been granted by the notoriously permissive UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. These have included permission to create cloned human beings for experimentation and human/rabbit hybrids. His suggestion that the research community be allowed to use dying human patients as test subjects was well received by the UK medical research community.
It is ironic that the prize comes from a German research foundation. Germany is particularly sensitive to the use of human beings, even at the embryonic stage of life, for medical research. The move to award Wilmut the prize, half of which is paid out of German tax revenues, was criticized by Marburger Bund physician’s organization. German Research Foundation (DFG) President Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker added, "Concerning therapeutic cloning, our opinion is unchanged, that therapeutic procedures with humans is the wrong way."
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Germany Condemning Dolly Cloner Wilmut as Recipient of Prestigious Ehrlich Science Prize
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/mar/05031702.html
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