Whistle-Blower Tells Why She Exposed Fertility Clinic : Scandal: Former office manager for UC Irvine doctors says alerting the university to irregularities ruined her career but was the right thing to do. The school now acknowledges her ‘courage.’

For Marilyn Killane, the journey from respected health care professional to reviled whistle-blower in UC Irvine’s fertility scandal has been devastating.

Killane contends that alerting the university to trouble at its esteemed fertility clinic has ruined her career, tarnishing her as someone who took $325,000 in “hush money” from officials trying to squelch the scandal. She says she has been called a liar, demoted to “paper-clip jobs” and threatened with dismissal by top university officials.

But she could not have done otherwise, Killane said Tuesday in her first public comments.

“I told the university from the beginning, ‘This will be cleared up before I will rest,’ ” said Killane, who once managed the office of the Center for Reproductive Health.

Tuesday, more than 15 months after her first formal complaint and a day before she was to tell her story to a state Senate committee, UC Irvine officials thanked the 55-year-old office manager for her “personal courage.”

“She was the person who first alerted us to the financial irregularities and use of a non-FDA-approved drug at the center,” said UC Irvine Executive Vice Chancellor Sidney H. Golub, reading from a prepared statement at a press conference.

“Her allegations have been largely substantiated by investigators, resulting in UCI’s closing the clinic and other actions. . . . Ms. Killane is a consummate health care professional who, from the beginning, put the well-being of patients ahead of her own career and personal goals.”

Still, Killane is angry. It shouldn’t have been this hard, she said.

For months after she made her initial allegations in February, 1994, disbelieving university administrators assailed her integrity, her reputation and her job performance, she said. She was bounced from job to job, then put on leave.

“I can’t tell you what this has done to my life,” said Killane, who was lured west in October, 1993, from a highly respected fertility clinic at Cornell University in New York.

Killane was the first of three whistle-blowers to trigger investigations into the allegations of drug misuse, financial improprieties, research misconduct and embryo stealing at UC Irvine’s vaunted clinic. Killane and her supervisor, Debra Krahel, also a whistle-blower, are scheduled to testify today before the Senate Select Committee on Higher Education.

These days, Killane said, she consoles herself with one thought: “I was right.”

Killane was prohibited from talking about the scandal by a confidentiality clause in the $325,00 settlement she reached with the university. She would have forfeited $50,000 if she broke her silence. But the university agreed Friday to release her from that obligation because, Golub said, her identity had been made public by others.

Tuesday, she nervously fielded questions at a press conference called by her attorney to vindicate her. “I know what I saw,” Killane said. “I know how to read an egg sheet. I know how patients should be treated and what should happen in reproductive health--and that did not happen here. I was appalled at what was happening.”

Killane said her job at the center was troublesome from the beginning. She arrived amid a university financial audit and was unable to officially assume her position for months while the investigation was under way, she said.

She had been on the job less than a week when she first spotted further financial troubles at the UC Irvine fertility center. The doctors were taking home packets of cash, said Killane, and it was not being reported to the university.

Then, in November, she heard rumblings of drug misuse and wrote a report, she said. The doctors were buying legal fertility drugs and selling them to patients for a 40% markup, Killane said. Other patients were sold a fertility drug, imported by center director Dr. Ricardo H. Asch from Argentina, which was not approved by the U.S. government.

After Christmas, when the drug allegations resurfaced, something snapped inside Killane. “That was it,” she said. “I had had it. I couldn’t handle it.”

She took her concerns to Krahel, a senior UC Irvine administrator.

“She was the only one who really listened to me,” Killane said. “Finally, I thought I had somebody who shared a concern of mine.”

But when Krahel pursued the matter, university officials accused the two women and a third whistle-blower, Carol Chatham, of a conspiracy against the university, they said.

“I didn’t even know what a whistle-blower was,” Killane said. “All I wanted was a job and for the doctors to clean up their acts.”

After she reported the alleged drug misuse, she said, Asch never spoke to her again. Krahel told her university officials were pushing for her termination. She was transferred, she said, to jobs that were beneath her qualifications. And in May, the doctors wrote a letter indicating that they would not allow her back on the premises.

In a September letter, an attorney for the three women repeated the allegations of misconduct and accused the university of a “common scheme of retaliation.”

UC Irvine, obligated under state law to probe the retaliation charges, began an investigation. A report on the findings by two University of San Diego law professors has not been released by the university, despite repeated requests from legislators, attorneys and the news media.