Triumphs, Troubles and Tea

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In recognition of that work, Hwang was named director of a new stem-cell center in Seoul with branch labs planned in the U.S. and Britain. He stepped down from that post last week after it was reported that a member of his team had purchased human eggs from as many as 27 women for use in the human stem-cell experiments and that two female members of his team had donated eggs to the cause. Egg selling became illegal in Korea not long after the secret sales, and it is considered a violation of scientific ethics for lab subordinates to provide ova, even free of charge. Hwang says he was not aware at first that team members had donated their eggs, but he learned of it later--and then publicly denied that it had happened. "I chose to protect my researchers' privacy," he says. As for the purchases from the other donors, he appears to have pursued a "Don't ask, don't tell" strategy. Hwang will continue to do stem-cell research at Seoul National University and remains a beloved figure in South Korea, where he now has no shortage of women willing to donate eggs free of charge for his research.

The uneasy marriage of money and medicine presented problems elsewhere in the world this year, particularly in the U.S. Around 46 million Americans still have no health insurance, and co-payments and deductibles are rising fast for those who do. Things were supposed to improve in November, when sign-ups began for the much touted and astonishingly expensive--an estimated $725 billion over 10 years--Medicare prescription-drug benefit for senior citizens. But so far, seniors don't seem pleased.

Some drugs are covered, some aren't, and beneficiaries don't know how to easily find out whether theirs qualify. Seniors are forced to choose among dozens of possible plans--a whopping 47 prescription-drug plans in Maryland alone. And even if someone enrolls, the program has a hole in the middle: benefits are capped at $2,250 in 2006, unless drug costs reach $5,100, at which point payments kick in again. For people with no drug coverage, the new benefits could make life a lot easier. But those who have some coverage will have a hard time deciding whether to stay with what they know or jump to the government's complicated offering.

Things got even worse in 2005 when health policy descended to health politics, and never more so than during the tragic burlesque surrounding the death of Terri Schiavo, the 41-year-old brain-damaged Florida woman whose husband petitioned to have her feeding tube removed. Advocates on both sides of the end-of-life debate leaped into the fray, but it was in Congress that the situation came truly unhinged. Senate majority leader and heart surgeon Bill Frist "spent an hour or so" viewing a widely circulated videotape of Schiavo--but never examined the patient--and pronounced himself unconvinced that she was irreversibly brain damaged. Tom DeLay went further, opining that Schiavo "talks and she laughs and she expresses happiness and discomfort." An autopsy later showed that Schiavo never could have recovered. Her ruined brain had atrophied to half its normal size.