WOO SUK HWANG, the disgraced South Korean cloning scientist, did not create a single cloned stem cell, an investigating panel has concluded.

The verdict is another blow to the career of a scientist hailed until recently as a national hero. He claimed to have produced 11 stem-cell lines, matched perfectly to patients, using therapeutic cloning. Before Christmas, the panel said that nine of them were faked. Now it has concluded that the other two were as well.

Roe Jung Hye, Dean of Research Affairs at Seoul National University, said that the panel had found that the two remaining stem-cell lines, claimed in a paper published in Science in May, had actually come from fertilised eggs. “The panel couldn’t find stem cells that match patients’ DNA regarding the 2005 paper, and it believes that Hwang’s team didn’t secure scientific data to prove that stem cells were made,” Professor Roe said.

The verdict was widely expected, but it means that there is now no proof that cloning can be used to produce patient-matched stem cells from adults — the basis of therapeutic cloning.

Rather than emulating Professor Hwang, scientists will now have to see if what he claimed to have achieved is even possible. Cloning has been achieved in animals, but may yet prove impossible in humans. All that is left to Professor Hwang is his supposedly cloned Afghan hound, Snuppy, and nobody today would take a bet that he is a clone either.

Yesterday a DNA testing laboratory in Seoul said that it had concluded that Snuppy was a clone. Humanpass Inc had been approached by Professor Hwang last month to carry out the tests and is not part of the official investigation.

A member of the panel said that verifying a cloned dog was more difficult than it may seem. In any case, Snuppy’s creation was a sideshow compared with Professor Hwang’s human cloning claims. The remaining question is how he thought that he would get away with it.

Times Recommends

• Should Knox’s trial even have reached the courtroom?
• 'Was it real?' The US bailout nightmare
• Iranian opposition plays the long game