THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Story appeared in the NEWS section on page A01

NEW FERTILITY ALLEGATION MEDICINE: RECORDS SHOW A COUPLE'S EMBRYOS WERE GIVEN TO A WOMAN, WHO BORE TWINS. COUPLE SAY THEY DIDN'T CONSENT.

Wednesday, May 24, 1995

MICHELLE NICOLOSI; JOHN HUGHES
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

A second Southern California couple said Tuesday that they did not agree to let a UCI fertility clinic doctor give their embryos to another woman, who later gave birth to twins.

UCI Center for Reproductive Health records show a Riverside woman's eggs were harvested and fertilized with her husband's sperm in 1991. Two days later, records show two of the embryos were transferred to an Orange County woman who gave birth to a boy and girl in 1992. Because that woman was given frozen embryos from another source, it is not known whether the Riverside couple are the genetic parents of the twins. Only DNA tests could prove that conclusively.

The Orange County Register reported Friday that records show Dr. Ricardo H. Asch also harvested three eggs from another Orange County woman, who said she did not consent to donate them. Those eggs were marked for another patient, who had a boy.

Lloyd Charton, Asch's attorney, denied any wrongdoing and said the doctor had reviewed files of the Riverside woman.

"Our review was done. The review absolutely bore out that Dr. Asch had acted completely appropriately and completely in accordance with the directions provided by the patient to him," Charton said.

Charton refused to comment specifically on the patient's consent forms but said he was confident everything was in order.

"This is so simple: It was suggested to Dr. Asch that he look at some paperwork from this lady patient. He looked at it. A determination was made after a review of the records that he'd done exactly what he'd been directed to do."

University of California, Irvine, spokeswoman Fran Tardiff said she would have no comment on the latest allegations. She did say that university attorneys are seeking sworn statements from former employees of the center as part of the investigation.

Donald Goldman, an attorney handling the lawsuit UCI filed May 17 against Asch and two other doctors, said the university will continue its investigation. The Orange County District Attorney's Office is overseeing a police investigation; the Medical Board of California, which licenses doctors, is conducting an administrative review.

The Riverside couple bowed their heads and cried Monday night after seeing photocopied records showing their embryos were transferred to another woman.

"Oh, God," the woman sobbed. "This can't be."

Wiping tears from red eyes, the woman asked: "So where do we go from here?"

The Riverside couple asked not to be identified.

They said they would not take children from a happy home: The children's welfare is the most important thing, they said.

"Would I take them away from this woman?" she asked. "No. I couldn't do that."

The Orange County woman who, records show, received the embryos declined to comment.

A month after her eggs were harvested, the Riverside woman was implanted with her own embryos. She gave birth to a son in 1992 after trying for 16 years to have a child. She and her husband had adopted a son several years earlier.

The Register provided the Riverside couple with a photocopy of a consent form that shows an "X" in a box next to the donation option. A color photocopy of the original record shows that the "X" is marked in blue, while the signatures are in black.

Both vouched for their signatures. They also denied checking the box approving donation. The box on that form instructing that the eggs be preserved for their own future use _ which they say was their desire _ was not checked.

The woman, a nurse, said Monday that she signed numerous forms and conceded the possibility that she checked the donation box or signed a blank form.

After thinking about it overnight, she said Tuesday: "There's no way I would have checked that. I know those are our two signatures. I know that I would not have checked just donation. In a court of law I would say that."

The husband said he never checked a box or signed a form agreeing to give away his embryos. Pointing to the photocopy, he said it was an "X" and he always uses check marks.

"We signed one stating I wanted them kept," said the wife. "I know we thought about donation, but I know when the paper came back, we signed that we wanted them all kept frozen. We felt that they were all frozen. That's the way we felt all this time."

A decision to donate eggs, the husband said, "is something we would be very, very, very much aware of. This is not something like giving away some extra books. This is part of yourself. You just don't give some part of yourself and forget it."

Two samples of sperm from the husband were frozen in anticipation of his wife's surgery in 1991.

Records also show that all of the eggs harvested during the procedure were inseminated with the husband's sperm. Records do not show which doctor harvested the eggs, but the patient said the physician was Asch.

Records show two embryos were transferred to the Orange County woman.

The doctor who transferred the embryos in the second patient, records show, was Asch.

The Register has reported that a center staff biologist has confirmed the authenticity of the logs and said the entries show that the embryos went from the Riverside woman to the Orange County woman.

A lawsuit filed last week against Asch and his partners at the center by the UC Board of Regents alleges that records have been removed from the center or altered in an attempt to hinder the university's investigation. Asch has denied these accusations.

"We feel like we've been tremendously violated at this point," the Riverside woman said Monday, recalling 16 years of fertility complications.

"As soon as we got married, we started trying to get pregnant," the woman said.

They prayed for a baby. The members of their church prayed with them. Every month the couple hoped and every month they were disappointed.

The worst of it all, the woman said, was "finding out you're not pregnant that month," news she heard more than 100 times in her quest for motherhood.

Hearing that news is "like a death," she said. "It's awful."

In 1991 she almost died trying to have a baby, she said; she reacted badly to a fertility drug and spent a week in the hospital recovering.

Her ovaries became so enlarged she says she was afraid of bumping into things, afraid to drive her car. Her adopted son became part of her fear. "I had to teach my son 911. I told him that if he found me in a puddle of blood, he was to dial 911."

As happy as she was with her adopted child, she said an "aching desire" carried her through the pain of trying to have a child, to "feel like a woman" until she ultimately had a child in 1992.

The possibility that an infertile woman was helped by the taking of her embryos "softens the blow," she said.

Still, "if you plant a seed, you look to see if it'll grow," the husband said. "Even if you're not there to see if it comes up, you wonder. Well now, what's in my mind is that every time I see a child anywhere of that age, I'm gonna wonder.

"Every time I see a child that looks like (his son), I'm going to think that could be his brother or it possibly could be his sister, or those twins could be related. It blows my mind. This is not something that could slip my mind, no way in the world."

Nor will the woman ever stop wondering whether someone else had the daughter she wanted.

"I feel like there's two little lives, and I don't even want to know (about them)," the woman said "... But if it's girls, I absolutely will take that to my grave. I always wanted girls."

Adjusting to this new reality "is going to take some time," the husband said.

"This is a major shock to me to think that we have anything to do in any remote way with any other children, other than the ones who live in our house. If you told me that cat was from Mars, I mean, that's the same thing. That's how new a thought this is. This is going to take some time."

Register staff writers Susan Kelleher and Kim Christensen contributed to this report.

QUESTIONS? If you have comments or questions regarding this story, please call Register staff writers Susan Kelleher and Kim Christensen at: (714) 953-7967.