NEW YORK (AP) -- Remember the spectacular South Korean stem cell fraud of a few years ago? A new analysis says the disgraced scientist actually did reach a long-sought scientific goal. It's just not the one he claimed.

The new study suggests Hwang Woo-suk and his team produced stem cells -- not through cloning as they contended -- but through a different process called parthenogenesis.

That, too, is an achievement scientists have long been pursuing.

In 2004, when Hwang and his colleagues at Seoul National University announced they had produced a human embryo through cloning and that they had recovered stem cells from it, the news made headlines around the world.

Two years later their research and a later paper were declared frauds by a committee of his university. The stem cells weren't produced by cloning, the committee said, but it was highly likely that they came about through a much different process called parthenogenesis.

In parthenogenesis, an unfertilized egg is stimulated to start dividing as if it had been joined by sperm. It develops for a while under the control of its own DNA. Some species, such as sharks, can reproduce that way. Human eggs can't develop long enough to make a baby.

In cloning, by contrast, an egg's DNA is removed and replaced with genetic material from a person. It is then stimulated as in parthenogenesis, but it develops under the control of the donor's DNA.

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Wow! I thought with the controversy over stem cells this thread would have gotten responded to by now.

Nobody found it....

But yes, here we have a story.

Sometimes Science is strange, on the one hand you have scientist like Sir Alex Flemming who discovers something by accident (penicillin) and knows what he sees. On the other you have somebody who researches and does not see what he is finding.

LOL, too true. But, if they actually can reproduce stem cells from eggs, that would be so amazing, think about what ailments they could treat!

or not, we had all kinds of promises. Part of being a biological being is biological misfunction. We call the ailment. We have to live with it.

As long as we age and die, there will be people who will try and prevent it.

Even if it has to be with plastic surgery.... at least the aging part... for a few years at horrendous cost.

I know! It's amazing what people will do with their bodies to prevent from aging.