Clinic Patients Agonize Over Fate of Embryos

When the news that some of the world’s finest fertility experts may have misused the embryos of their patients hit the papers, the Mission Viejo woman had one goal: to get her “babies.”

“I read all of that,” said the 33-year-old, who has five embryos frozen at the Saddleback Center for Reproductive Health. “Of course, my babies were my main concern.”

As allegations mount that doctors Ricardo H. Asch, Jose P. Balmaceda and Sergio Stone, three of the world’s best-known fertility specialists, took the embryos of women without their consent and transplanted them in others, dozens of women have called the now-defunct UC Irvine Center for Reproductive Health and the Saddleback clinic wondering about the fate of their embryos.

Like them, the Mission Viejo woman and her husband, 31, also have another concern: Are the embryos they thought were safely frozen for their future really theirs?

“I have to thaw one of them to find out if it’s really mine,” the woman said, her voice breaking. “That leaves me with four. That’s all I’ve got left. I got to waste one for DNA testing to see what it is. I have to kill my own baby that it took me $10,000 and 3 1/2 years to get.”

The Mission Viejo woman’s embryos, stored in a straw in a deep freeze, hold out the promise of a family. But she and many other women fear that promise will not be fulfilled. Either the embryos won’t be there, or won’t be theirs, they worry.

Suddenly, many of the professional, well-educated couples who had placed an almost blind faith in the famed UCI physicians are asking questions they ignored in the desperate pursuit of child.

“Here we have a situation of not only going to a doctor, but going to a world-famous doctor,” said Melanie Blum, a Santa Ana medical malpractice attorney the Mission Viejo couple and three other couples who believe their embryos might have been misused. “Can you imagine a situation where people are more vulnerable? Educated people who would otherwise ask questions didn’t.”

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Since the story unfolded, two couples have filed legal notice that they intend to sue the doctors, alleging their eggs or embryos were used to impregnate other women who later gave birth. A Santa Ana woman also has filed a notice accusing Asch of allowing her eggs to be used for animal research without her consent. And now the Mission Viejo couple has given notice of intent to sue Balmaceda and his associate, Dr. Jane L. Frederick, accusing them of mishandling the fertilization procedure from start to finish. Frederick has not been accused by UCI of any wrongdoing.

Other couples have contacted Blum and other attorneys in recent days wondering if their embarrassing, painful and expensive efforts to conceive a child have come to a shattering end.

All of the doctors have denied intentionally misusing any embryos and have assured their patients that their embryos are safely stored.

Patrick Moore, Balmaceda’s attorney, said the physician has not seen “a flood of patients” coming to remove their embryos.

“Some have wanted to see them,” he said. “Some people have been shown the straws the embryos are contained in. If someone wants their embryos transferred, they can do that.”

But the Mission Viejo couple said the pursuit of their embryos has been anything but easy.

Their story started last November, when the woman went to see if the famed fertility experts at the Saddleback Center for Reproductive Health could help her conceive a baby.

Three weeks before Christmas--for a grand total of $10,892.67 with a $3,000 discount for paying cash-- Frederick took out nine eggs and fertilized them with the sperm of the husband. The woman directed that five of the embryos should be frozen.

Frederick began to place the remaining four via a catheter in the woman, she said.

The procedure became painful, the woman said, and Frederick suddenly said she needed a new tip for the catheter. Turning to the biologist, she said, “Oh God, get the hook.” And while the woman’s husband and sister looked on, the biologist grabbed the catheter full of embryos and ran down the hall to get a different tip for it, she said.

“We were open-mouthed looking at what was going on,” the woman remembered.

After the procedure, Frederick told the couple to call back in two weeks to see if the woman was pregnant.

The woman said she did not get pregnant and decided to wait for six months to try again. She paid $500 to have her embryos frozen and promised to pay $50 a year to keep them frozen there until she used them.

Then in May, she saw the newspaper reports, the woman said, and decided to go get her “babies” at Saddleback and transfer them to another hospital.

But when she asked for her embryos at the clinic, she was quickly ushered into an examination room and greeted by Balmaceda, the woman said.

“He said, ‘We feel for you. The next [in-vitro fertilization] is on me,’ ” the woman remembered. “I’ll do it for free. You were stressed and things didn’t work out,” she quoted him as saying.

Two days later, the woman said, she and her husband met for two hours with Balmaceda, who urged them not to move their embryos and showed them a piece of paper signed by the woman that he said proved the couple still had five embryos. At their request he signed a piece of paper that guaranteed them a free in-vitro procedure worth $2,500, she said. They were not allowed to see the embryos, she said.

But when her husband pressed on how they could know the embryos were theirs, Balmaceda said he couldn’t be sure, and they would have to trust him, the woman said. He told them, she said, “It could be pieces of frozen Popsicle in there for all I know. We have no idea what’s in the catheter. The biologists run the lab. The embryologists run the logs.”

The woman said she and her husband left and decided to move their eggs somewhere else and hired Blum to help the couple get them. They plan to transfer their eggs to another fertility clinic Tuesday.

“All I wanted was a baby,” the woman said. “I was blinded by hope.”

Moore, Balmaceda’s attorney, said he hadn’t seen the woman’s claim, but said her story, “didn’t sound at all like Pepe [Balmaceda’s nickname]. This whole thing is just all kinds of people coming out of the woodwork. . . . I’m not even sure that ever happened.”

Patients “who have had an unsuccessful treatment sometimes are unhappy.”