UCI FERTILITY SCANDAL : Couple Who Say Embryos Were Taken Sue Clinic : Courts: Another woman had twins after the eggs were implanted unbeknown to them, they say. University of California, three embattled doctors are also named.

A Corona couple treated at UC Irvine’s Center for Reproductive Health alleged in a suit filed Thursday that doctors took their fertilized eggs and implanted them in another woman who gave birth to twins three years ago.

The suit, filed by John and Deborah Challender, says the center harvested as many as 46 eggs and promised that a number would be fertilized and saved. Instead, the suit says, some of the Challender eggs were fertilized with John Challender’s sperm and then implanted in a 44-year-old woman.

The suit names the University of California, the fertility center and doctors Ricardo H. Asch, Sergio Stone and Jose P. Balmaceda as defendants.

“This has just been devastating to us,” said Deborah Challender, 36.

“Finding out that they never cared about ethics or about morality was stunning to us,” said John Challender, 46. “It’s still stunning to me. And we’re doing this because we just want the world to know that ethics must be a part of a physician’s practice.”

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None of the attorneys for the defendants had seen the suit Thursday, and all questioned whether the Challenders’ attorney, Theodore S. Wentworth of Newport Beach, had met the state statute requiring a 90-day notice that his clients intended to sue a governmental institution.

Wentworth, however, said the statute does not apply to the University of California.

The suit also says that the university’s agreement to pay three whistle-blowers more than $900,000 not to divulge their suspicions about the clinic shows its complicity in the misuse of the Challender embryos.

“By buying the silence of their employees who reported improper conduct of defendants, [the] university has displayed a callous disregard for the emotional, spiritual and physical well being of the plaintiffs in order to hide, conceal and obscure the activities of the Center for Reproductive Health,” the suit states.

The Challenders learned in late May that their embryos were given to another woman after seeing medical records from the clinic. But the Challenders are not certain the twins are theirs because the woman received other embryos. However, the Challenders said they believe the twins came from their embryos.

In addition to filing suit in Orange County Superior Court, the couple has given the university and the fertility doctors 90 days’ notice that they intend to file a malpractice suit, Wentworth said.

At Wentworth’s office Thursday, the couple granted successive interviews to a crowd of reporters from local, national and international media, sitting before hot lights and telling and retelling their story.

Their 2 1/2-year-old son, James, born as a result of the Challenders’ treatment at the fertility clinic, swiveled in the clerks’ chairs and played with the telephones.

Since learning two weeks ago that they may be the biological parents of another couple’s twins, the Challenders have tried to master their desire to claim the children, and instead trust they will be loved and cared for by the mother and father the children know.

“We are angry at the university and at the doctors for breaking that patient-doctor relationship of ethics and trust,” Deborah Challender said. ‘And we are grieving for the children we do not know.

“But there also is joy that another woman has two children to love,” she said.

The Challenders do not know the woman who gave birth to the twins, but both say they want to reassure the couple that they will not attempt to take custody of the twins.

“I would love to see them,” Deborah Challender said. “I wouldn’t want to be a parent to them, but I would love to have them as a friend and someday, tell them the truth.”

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Asch, who was Deborah Challender’s doctor at the clinic, was a charming man who had their complete faith, the couple said. But he never asked them to donate embryos and they never gave their permission.

A copy of the clinic’s permission slip shows an “X” in the box granting consent, but both Challenders said they never made the mark. The form is dated Sept. 9, 1991, and since Deborah Challender did not have any embryos implanted in her until November, it is unthinkable that she would give away embryos before becoming pregnant herself, the couple said.

The clinic, which closed June 2, is the subject of eight investigations by campus officials, the Orange County district attorney’s office and state and federal agencies. University officials have sued the three doctors, alleging that they transplanted human eggs without consent, gave patients a fertility drug not approved by the federal government and accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments that were not reported to the university.

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The Challenders’ suit seeks no specified amount in damages. No amount is suggested, the couple said, partly because they could not put a price on a child, but also because the suit’s primary purpose is to call attention to the lack of ethical safety nets in the field of assisted reproduction.

“Our technology has surpassed our society’s ethics,” Wentworth said. “We need to explore the ethics of what is happening with assisted reproduction, and we have filed suit in order to force the university to have a dialogue about it.”

The ordeal, however, has not shaken the Challenders’ belief in the power of assisted reproduction.

“I would never want that taken away from a woman,” Deborah Challender said. “I don’t even regret what happened with all this, in order for us to have the joy of having my two kids.”