Researcher jailed for faking HIV vaccine trial data
06 Jul 2015
Former Iowa State University scientist Dong-Pyou Han, has been sentenced to jail for over 4 years for faking HIV vaccine trial data.
The guilty scientist had altered blood samples contaminating them with rabbit blood to make it appear he had achieved a breakthrough toward a potential vaccine against HIV.
He was sentenced to over four and a half years in prison last week for false claims in research reports.
Dong-Pyou Han, would also be required to $7.2 million to a federal government agency that funded the research.
In February, the scientist entered a plea agreement admitting guilt to two counts of making false statements.
According to government prosecutors, Han's misconduct dates back to 2008 when he worked at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland under professor Michael Cho, who was leading a team testing an experimental HIV vaccine on rabbits.
His team began injecting an experimental HIV vaccine into rabbits to check whether it could evoke an appropriate immune response, and remarkably it seemed to work.
The blood sample were shown to contain antibodies suggesting the animals were starting to tackle the virus. Cho ecstatic with the results, requested more money to continue the research.
In a statement, a US attorney for the southern district of Iowa, remaked, "Just because somebody has a PhD, just because someone's involved in the scientific community, doesn't mean they're going to necessarily be treated differently than anyone else who's committed a criminal offence."
North Korea too had reported a miracle cure for HIV, claiming its Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un had advised scientists to find the cure for AIDS, cancer and Ebola.
According to The Korean Central News Agency Jong-Un's scientists had developed a miracle drug, known as Kumdang-2, from ginseng, a plant.
