Nov. 4, 1995

Clinic Scandal Widens

by SUSAN KELLEHER,KIM CHRISTENSEN, DAVID PARRISH and MICHELLE NICOLOSI

At least 60 women were unknowingly involved in illicit egg or embryo transfers by UCI fertility doctors -- nearly double the number of patients that university officials have previously acknowledged.

Interviews and records obtained by The Orange County Register provide potent new evidence that one of the biggest medical scandals in U.S. history is broader than previously believed and continues to grow.

"To find out maybe you have a 7-year-old child out there is devastating," said Renee Presson, 38, of Sacramento, who learned last week that the newly uncovered records show that four of her eggs were given in 1987 to another woman who gave birth to a boy.

The most stunning of the records is a 1994 seven-page handwritten list that tracks donations from 110 women to 93 recipients, resulting in at least 51 pregnancies and an unknown number of births -- the first document indicating that scores of patients were involved in donations.

While the list does not indicate if donations were made with consent, 27 women have said in interviews or through their attorneys they did not consent. Records including handwritten logs and partial patient charts show that their eggs were given to 28 recipients.

The Register also accounted for 28 donations that appear consensual, but was unable to reach 55 donors, leaving in question whether they had consented.

In a prepared statement released Friday, University of California, Irvine, officials said they did not have a copy of the list. However, UCI is part of a state and federal task force that obtained a copy of the list more than one month ago as part of its investigation.

"We have declined to offer information to the Register regarding the names on the list because any comments that could lead to identifying patients is a violation of their privacy, which we are legally and ethically obligated to protect," said Executive Vice Chancellor Sidney Golub.

State Sen. Tom Hayden, D-Santa Monica, said UCI officials have not been aggressive in determining who were victims of egg theft.

"It appears the scope of the problem is much larger than what has been admitted by the university," said Hayden, who chaired a Senate committee hearing last June into the scandal at UCI's Center for Reproductive Health.

"There is almost a conflict of interest here," Hayden said.

On one hand the university officials have said they are on top of the problem and have tried to minimize the public-relations problem, Hayden said, yet that prevents them from aggressively trying to determine the scope of the problem, he continued.

"The university is operating in such a way as if it was best that these people never found out," Hayden said.

Former clinic biologist Teri Ord said she prepared the list at the requests of Drs. Ricardo H. Asch and Jose P. Balmaceda, who asked her to glean the names from embryology logs kept in the lab.

One part of the list was prepared in the summer of 1994, just as UCI started official inquiries into persistent allegations of egg misuse. A second part was created about seven months later, when UCI had assigned a nurse to guard patient charts at the clinic, Ord said.

Criminal investigators have obtained the list as part of the grand-jury probe of the doctors and their practice. Federal officials involved in the investigation refused to comment.

The doctors have repeatedly denied wrongdoing and have refused requests for interviews.

The Register provided the list two weeks ago to lawyers for Asch and Balmaceda, who have been out of the country for two months. Their lawyers say Balmaceda has been in his native Chile, while Asch has been on a speaking tour abroad.

Asch's lawyer, Ronald G. Brower, could not be reached for comment despite repeated messages left at his office over the past week.

In an interview with ABC's "PrimeTime Live" to air Wednesday, Asch said he did not believe that 35 women's eggs had been stolen.

"I disagree 100 percent," he said. "I don't think ... that there's any way it could be those numbers."

But he said he did not have the medical records that would allow him "to say yes or no" whether improper transfers occurred.

"I don't really think at all it happened," he said. "And the reason I don't know is ... I don't have the records. The university took them or I don't know where they are, you know. I don't have them and I never had them. Like I don't have the biological, er, laboratory records of any sort."

Patrick Moore, Balmaceda's lawyer, said he forwarded the list to his client two weeks ago but that the doctor had not had time to review it.

Moore said he could not check the list against patient charts because federal officials had seized the records. But he said Balmaceda had never transferred eggs or embryos without patients' consent, and he cautioned that Ord's list should not be taken at face value.

"The list is not necessarily the Bible," Moore said. "It should be pointed out that the list is not necessarily accurate. Therefore, what might be listed as an unconsented donation may in fact be a consented donation."

University officials have said that as many as 35 patients were involved in the improper egg transfers at the UCI clinic and its predecessor clinic in Garden Grove.

Barbara and Carlos Parham of Fullerton believe their chance at childbirth is lost. Photo by MINDY SCHAUER / The Orange County Register

"I could have had babies," said Barbara Parham, 41, of Fullerton, who was a patient in 1987 and learned that records show all three of her eggs were stolen. "It's too late now. The chance is gone."

One former patient whose name is on Ord's list said her husband called UCI police after the scandal broke and was told that her case was not among those under investigation. The list shows that four of her eggs were given to another patient in 1989.

"I don't feel a lot of anger. I feel sick to my stomach," said Elizabeth Shaw Smith, 46, of Tustin. "I feel they used me. They manipulated my body and stole my eggs and my money."

UCI officials said they sent letters to 24 patients for whom they had addresses and whom they believed were victims at the clinic. Only a few responded and UCI officials have refused to say how many letters were returned undeliverable.

Neither Shaw Smith nor Presson received letters from UCI, although both wondered if they were victims.

"Nobody that is trying to have their own child is going to donate eggs. No one," Presson said after learning of the new list last week. "We made it very clear that we would never donate our eggs or embryos."

Ord, who had worked with Asch since about 1982, said she created the list from the embryology logs given her by the doctors on separate occasions last year. She authenticated the photocopy obtained by the Register and interpreted the medical symbols. She said she never had access to records that would have indicated consent or lack of consent for donations.

The list contains last names of donors and recipients, some with first names or initials. It also indicates the number of eggs harvested, the number donated and, in most cases, whether pregnancy was achieved. It does not indicate the number of births, nor whose sperm was used to inseminate the eggs.

Lacking addresses, telephone numbers or other identifiers, the Register was able to contact 32 donors in person or through their attorneys.

Of those, 27 said they did not consent to donate eggs. Five said they did. The Register also determined through records and interviews that 23 others on the list were paid donors or had agreed to donate eggs to relatives.

The other 55 donors could not be reached for comment. But other patient charts and embryology logs obtained by the Register show that at least three members of that group had eggs taken, despite signing forms forbidding donation.

Fertility experts and former clinic employees have said that donations by patients are rare, mainly because women are trying to get pregnant themselves and would have no incentive to give away eggs.

Asch's attorneys contend that Ord is responsible for any improper transfers. Ord said that she did not handle patient consent forms because that task was handled by medical assistants and was not part of her job. She said Asch told her which patients' eggs to transfer.

The story goes beyond Ord's list of 110 donors. Other records obtained by the Register appear to show that three patients not on the list had their embryos given to Cornell University researchers without their consent in June 1994. Another patient says her eggs were sent without consent to a zoological researcher in Wisconsin. Former clinic employees have confirmed those unconsented transfers.

And one other woman also had her eggs taken without consent, according to patient charts, embryology logs and interviews.

Ord's records did not include names of patients treated at a clinic directed by Balmaceda at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills, where a formal egg-donation program was based, nor at a UC San Diego clinic headed by Asch. UCSD officials say five women apparently were involved in improper egg or embryo transfers there.

Allegedly unauthorized egg transfers are at the heart of at least a dozen lawsuits filed against the doctors, UCI and the University of California regents. State and federal authorities also are investigating allegations of egg theft, tax evasion, insurance fraud and research misconduct.

Asch, Balmaceda and their former partner, Dr. Sergio C. Stone, have ceased practicing in Orange County since the scandal erupted in May when the Register first reported two alleged instances of egg theft.

Asch and Balmaceda have sold their Orange County homes and have been out of the country in recent weeks. Stone still resides in Orange County.

Stone's attorney, Karen L. Taillon, said her client did not join the clinic until mid- or late 1990, so he would have had no contact with the patients on the list who received fertility treatment before that. She also noted that Stone did not routinely do egg transfers.

"Dr. Stone does not do in-vitro fertilization," she said, adding that he was kept in the dark by the university about any problems at the fertility clinic.

Some patients named on the list said they did consent to have their eggs given to others. They also spoke highly of Asch and Balmaceda, who a decade ago pioneered a fertility regimen known as gamete intrafallopian transfer, or GIFT.

"They were the nicest, the kindest and the warmest men," said Charlene "Candi" Olit, 42, of Redondo Beach.

A patient at the Garden Grove clinic in 1987, Olit and her husband had undergone surgery and inseminations for six years before turning to UCI.

After her GIFT surgery, one of the doctors came into the recovery room and asked her if she was interested in donating. She said there was no pressure.

"I said, `If someone can have good luck with them, let them have them.' "

Several donors were listed as "sister," which clinic employees said indicated a transfer from the recipient's sibling, apparently with consent. But even some of the consensual donors had surplus eggs given without their consent to other women, records and interviews show.

Nearly all patients wanted unused eggs inseminated and frozen for their future use, especially after 1989, when the clinic's biologists had become proficient at freezing and thawing embryos, former clinic employees said.

Freezing embryos was the standard practice unless the patient -- by checking specific boxes on the consent form -- requested that her unused eggs be donated or destroyed, employees said.

Ord's donor list also included names of former patients who early on had stood behind the doctors during the fertility scandal.

Such was the case of Bill and Wanda Nagy of Anaheim Hills, who had twins with the doctors' help.

But after Wanda Nagy underwent a GIFT procedure performed by Balmaceda in May 1987, 10 of her 34 eggs were given to two other patients, the logs show.

No consent was granted, the Nagys said, and no pregnancy resulted. Still, they are left to wonder whether other of their eggs have been used to produce children they have not met.

But while they remain grateful to Asch and Balmaceda for their twins, they also feel betrayed.

"You know, you put your trust in someone and you have high hopes for them and then all of a sudden -- boom! -- it just drops," Wanda Nagy said. "You never want to believe it, and you never think it could be you. It's shocking."

Register staff writer Ernie Slone contributed to this report.