'Cloned' dog Snuppy cavorts in snow as cell scientist quits

While South Korea’s most famous scientist was resigning today in scandal after his university said key research was faked, one of his greatest purported breakthroughs was cavorting in the snow.

Snuppy, an Afghan hound that researcher Hwang Woo-suk said he cloned, was shown in photographs by South Korean media being led by a handler on a lead through the grounds of Seoul National University’s animal hospital, where the dog is now kept.

“Snuppy’s well,” an official at the animal hospital said.

Hwang revealed Snuppy – named for Seoul National University puppy – in August, claiming to have created the world’s first cloned dog. But like his other breakthroughs in stem-cell science, that assertion is now being questioned.

A university panel that had been investigating a May paper in the journal Science on Hwang’s stem-cell research said that Hwang had fabricated those results, and that it was also now investigating the claims of the cloned dog.