UCI Fertility Scandal : Insider Complaints Launched Latest Investigations : Probe: Two unidentified fertility center employees blew the whistle in separate incidents last year, as a lawsuit filed Thursday by UCI reveals.

It all began with two employees who blew the whistle on three big-league doctors.

A series of investigations into the renowned Center for Reproductive Health apparently has its roots in two separate complaints, in February and September of last year, by insiders against fertility specialists Ricardo H. Asch, Sergio Stone and Jose Balmaceda.

In an amended lawsuit filed Thursday, University of California officials revealed for the first time how the two unidentified people brought to light what could prove one of the most troubling chapters in UCI’s 30-year history.

*

In February of 1994, according to the suit, one person complained to the university that the doctors had hidden cash from the university, in violation of their contract. That whistle-blower, whose allegations led to an internal audit, also charged that Asch had imported HMG Massone, a fertility drug not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and sold it to his patients.

Eight months later, another whistle-blower came forward. This time the allegations were more far-ranging and, according to university officials, more disturbing.

The complaint last September alleged that doctors at the fertility center implanted eggs into a patient without the consent of donors. It also repeated charges that the doctors engaged in “questionable financial practices” and that Asch improperly imported HMG Massone.

The whistle-blower complaints were the most sweeping and serious ever investigated at the 5-year-old center, although two previous internal audits, in 1992 and 1993, found weaknesses in the center’s financial operations. The February, 1992, audit, for example, begun after about $4,600 was stolen from a safe over a holiday weekend, found that financial record-keeping and security at the center were inadequate.

Another probe in January of 1993 found “inadequate internal accounting controls and insufficient direct supervision of support staff.”

In response to the second whistle-blower in September, 1994, the university formed separate panels to investigate the center’s clinical, management and financial operations.

*

The clinical panel found “plausible evidence” for the charges that eggs were improperly taken and transplanted. But the panel was unable to reach any definitive conclusion, according to the suit, because the doctors refused to cooperate with the investigation. The panel also found the doctors had failed to obtain informed consent from patients to use them as research subjects, leading to yet another misconduct investigation at the university.

By January, the federal Office for Protection for Research Risks was involved, complaining about the center’s “research misconduct,” according to the suit. About the same time, Executive Vice Chancellor Sidney Golub directed the physicians at the fertility center to cease all research with human subjects and imposed monitoring of their research practices.

By May, amid ongoing probes on campus, UCI sued the three doctors and investigations were launched by the state medical board, the Orange County district attorney’s office and the state auditor. Asch, Stone, and Balmaceda all were placed on leave from the UCI faculty, and Asch resigned from the medical staff.