New Theft Allegation in UCI Fertility Case : Scandal: O.C. couple are second to contend that stolen eggs and sperm were used to impregnate another woman.

A second couple put the University of California and its famed fertility doctors on notice Monday that they intend to sue, claiming the couple’s eggs and sperm were stolen and used to impregnate a 46-year-old woman who later gave birth to a baby boy.

The Orange County couple’s action follows a legal claim filed May 23 by another couple alleging improper egg transfers by UC Irvine fertility specialist Dr. Ricardo H. Asch and his partners.

That first couple, who live north of Los Angeles, contend that an embryo stolen from them produced a year-old boy now living in Mexico.

Their attorney alleged Monday that this couple learned of the boy’s existence from Asch himself during an April phone call.

And in a revelation that could broaden the fertility scandal beyond UCI, Larry R. Feldman, the attorney for both couples, said Monday that the first couple’s embryos had allegedly been taken during a 1993 procedure at UC San Diego’s Assisted Reproductive Technologies clinic. Asch has a contract with the clinic that expires June 30.

“This could be a much broader and wider investigation than just UC Irvine,” said Feldman, a Santa Monica civil attorney. “This whole thing is a mess.”

UC San Diego officials declined to comment on the allegations, beyond saying that they are investigating their fertility program and have severed ties with Asch in the wake of the UCI inquiry.

Asch and his partners, Jose P. Balmaceda and Sergio Stone, have repeatedly denied any intentional wrongdoing and have blamed any problems on clerical mistakes.

The legal claim filed Monday comes as UCI officials are suing Asch, Balmaceda and Stone, alleging that the physicians are withholding patient files and embryologist records, and accusing them of taking eggs without consent, giving patients an unapproved fertility drug and failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash payments to the university.

Feldman accused university administrators of ignoring the patients in their battle.

“It’s astounding they didn’t even contact these women,” he said. “It’s astounding to me that a hospital and doctors can get in a legal fight over who’s going to be the record keeper when the lives of two women and perhaps more are going to be irreparably changed by these events. . . . The damn Regents know and they don’t tell the patients.”

UCI spokeswoman Fran Tardiff said Monday that she had not heard of the latest legal claim, but “we desperately care about what happens to these patients. It would have been irresponsible to contact people prematurely before we had at least reasonable evidence and disturb their peace of mind.”

Neither of the two couples Feldman represents have revealed their identities in the legal claims, copies of which were sent to all potential defendants, but he said their anonymity will be short-lived when they file lawsuits against the university.

Feldman said the Orange County couple that filed the new legal claim Monday believe that eggs and sperm taken from them in 1991 were implanted in another Orange County woman whose husband was infertile.

After a procedure at the UCI Center for Reproductive Health, Feldman alleges, Asch told the woman he had harvested seven eggs and that he had placed four into her Fallopian tubes, along with her husband’s sperm. The three remaining eggs were supposed to be frozen for future use, the lawyer said.

In May of this year, Feldman said, the couple received an anonymous telephone call indicating that a child had been born from eggs and sperm taken from them. Since then, he said, the couple has received information that 14 eggs were actually removed from the woman, not seven, and that three of those eggs were given to another woman.

“She learned the information from a person who disclosed that [Feldman’s client] had a 3 1/2-year-old child,” he said. “The person said, ‘We want to tell you something that was going on with the clinic.’

“Her husband’s sperm and her egg were actually placed in another woman, the cryologs show. That child is 100% biologically theirs,” Feldman said.

Feldman said the Orange County couple, who are both professionals in their mid-30s, are especially devastated because they had to wait another four years to get pregnant--and turned to another fertility specialist.

He said the emotional pain also was severe for the first couple. Feldman alleged that the woman learned her embryos had been used to impregnate another woman without her consent during an out-of-the-blue phone call from Asch in April.

According to court records filed by the university, Asch sent the woman a letter in March asking her to sign a retroactive consent form that her eggs could be used for research. The woman ignored the request, Feldman said.

The following month Asch allegedly called the woman and tried to persuade her to retroactively consent to donate eggs taken from her during an August, 1993, procedure at UC San Diego’s clinic, Feldman said.

“She was shocked when he called,” Feldman said. “She popped the question and asked if there was a baby. He said, ‘You have a 1-year-old baby boy in Mexico.’ I think he was caught by surprise, frankly.”

The woman has since had a baby of her own after receiving treatments from Asch in 1994.

Asch’s attorney Ronald G. Brower confirmed Monday that Asch had called the woman in April, but he denied that Asch asked the woman to sign a retroactive consent form that her eggs could be donated.

“He had got information that she was a person involved in some possible misuse or misplacement of eggs,” Brower said. “He had some thirdhand information that she was a person involved and he wanted to find out what it was about.”

Asch “appeared to be despondent” after the telephone call and wasn’t able to recount the conversation, Brower said. So Brower said he sent one of his investigators to the woman’s house in May to find out what was said during the phone call. The woman’s husband turned the investigator away.

In court papers, UCI contends that the investigator attempted to strong-arm the woman into signing a retroactive consent form allowing the use of her eggs for research.

Feldman said he believes the woman’s eggs were misappropriated at the San Diego clinic in 1993.

Brower, however, said he was not aware of any allegations concerning the San Diego clinic and Asch had not been contacted by anyone regarding the clinic there.

Leslie Franz, spokeswoman for the UC San Diego School of Medicine, declined to comment Monday on the woman’s allegations, except to say that they were part of an “ongoing review” of the school’s fertility program, which was founded in 1993 and employed Asch as a non-salaried professor and consultant.

Asch’s contract with the UCSD program will not be renewed, Franz said.

“Certainly, any cases like this that come to light will also be part of that review, if they aren’t already,” Franz said. “Beyond that, because of the confidential nature of the review process, we just can’t comment further. I can’t really say any more than that.

“It’s something we’re taking very seriously and have since the allegations first came to our notice.”

Franz said that, when the program was founded two years ago, UCSD sought the services of Asch, because of his experience “and international credentials.”

She said that Asch came to San Diego four times a year “to manage the patients in the program. Certainly, his experience was significant in the formative years of the program. He collaborated closely with all the members of our program, particularly Dr. Michael Kettel,” whom UCSD recently named the director of the program.

Franz said UCSD severed its relationship with Asch “in light of what was happening up at Irvine. . . . Once we became fully aware of the nature of the allegations involving UC Irvine, we wanted to ensure that our ART program be able to proceed successfully. We’ve also impaneled our own review committee to investigate the program and review the data to see if there were any irregularities in San Diego as well.”