Genius Kills Himself

According to reports, Deputy Director of Center for Developmental Biology in Riken, Yoshiki Sasai, was found hung at a pace in the building of CDB last Monday. Although he was send to a hospital, his death was confirmed a few hours later. Police makes detailed investigation to determine his suicide. Sasai was accused of disciplinary failure in disputed discovery of stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency cells. It is difficult to decide what he was a victim of, his own weakness as an individual or struggle between academic groups.

One thing the people around Sasai agreed on is that he was a genius. Graduated Medical School of Kyoto University, Sasai renewed the youngest school record of being promoted to a professor in the age of thirty-six. He consecutively made new discoveries in the field of regenerative medical study. He was a top runner of the world in the study of generating various organizations, such as retina or brain tissues, from embryonic stem cells. “I cannot help regret the loss of an indispensable scholar for world science,” told the President of Riken, and a laureate Noble Prize in Chemistry.

Sasai was at the position of producer for the STAP study, captained by Haruko Obokata. After she was accused of fabrication and misuse of data in her article on Nature magazine, Sasai publicly apologized of his lack of discipline on her as a mentor. Although he acknowledged responsibility of him, he kept on encouraging Obokata to prove the existence of STAP cells. In the letter of his will to Obokata, Sasai asked her to reproduce STAP cells and denied her responsibility on his death. Obokata was extremely shocked by the suicide of Sasai, according to her lawyer.

Sasai’s death will be likely to affect to the STAP study being reviewed by Obokata and her colleagues. Sasai realized that hypothesis of STAP cell is worth for verification. Main disputers against STAP were molecular biologists. Even after press conference of Obokara and Sasai to apologize insufficiency of their experiments, they argued that the result of the study had been explainable without existence of STAP cells.

It is undeniable that there might be a struggle of biologists for their survival, because biology is based on the notion of no return of differentiated cells to prulipotency. The finding of STAP cell may fundamentally overturn achievements of the biologists. It is unclear whether the dispute will be ceased by the death of a genius in a situation that there appeared a conspiracy theory of someone’s hiring of “suicide experts,” which is said to be professionals for pushing someone into a corner of suicide.