In vitro, no one can hear you scream...

The University of Pittsburgh this week launched a preliminary inquiry to silence doubts about whether researchers involved in landmark stem-cell experiments engaged in scientific misconduct.

The university's Office of Research Integrity will conduct the inquiry to show there was no wrongdoing associated with high-profile articles published by Pitt reproductive sciences professor Gerald Schatten and his former colleague, embattled cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-Suk in South Korea, said Dr. Arthur Levine, Pitt's senior vice chancellor for health sciences and medical school dean.

"This is a somewhat unprecedented inquiry," Levine said. "Essentially, it's being done to reassure the public, and not because anyone of substance has alleged misconduct."

Saith the employee of the public university. I guess taxpayers and citizens of the Commonwealth have no substance. They're just ATMs used to finance whatever Frankenclone old Doc Levine and his buddies want to whip up.

Last month, Schatten publicly severed ties with Hwang after the South Korean scientist acknowledged that two junior workers in his lab donated their eggs for research and a hospital doctor paid other women for their eggs. Neither practice was illegal at the time, but Hwang long had denied engaging in what many scientists consider unethical.

Let me get this straight. Buying unfertilized eggs is bad, but killing people (Oops! Forgive me, my moral and intellectual superiors. "Fertilized eggs" is the phrase you prefer because it helps you sleep at night.) is okey-dokey.

The egg specimens acquired in this manner were used by Hwang's team in the historic cloning of a human embryo. These data were published with the help of Schatten in 2004 in Science, the leading American research journal.

In a breakthrough that received international attention last year, Hwang and Schatten also announced they had become the first to grow human embryonic stem cells from cloned embryos. This is the first step toward therapeutic cloning, which is the theorized process of repairing patients with their own tissues.

Wow. Talk about spin! How about the "theorized process of repairing (Huh?) patients by bringing new people into the world and then killing them for their parts"?

Maybe I'm over-reacting. Perhaps their research is funded by the Soylent Corporation.