Egg Misuse May Have Involved 30 More Patients, UCI Reports : Scandal: The scope of the fertility clinic’s alleged improprieties is widened dramatically, touching a third hospital and including patients treated as long ago as 1988.

UC Irvine officials announced Wednesday that about 30 additional patients might have been involved in improper transplants of eggs and embryos at a UCI fertility clinic and a former affiliate in Garden Grove--a development that marks a dramatic expansion of the fertility scandal’s scope.

The improper transfers from one woman to another, which allegedly occurred from 1988 to 1992, were conducted without any of the patients’ consent, and might have resulted in seven live births, said UCI spokeswoman Fran Tardiff.

Previous estimates were that as many as five improper transfers had occurred at UCI.

But the university, which since last September has been probing allegations of human egg misuse by three physicians at its Center for Reproductive Health, came upon “credible evidence” within the past three weeks that approximately 30 more patients at the two clinics might have been involved in the unapproved transfers, said UCI Executive Vice Chancellor Sidney H. Golub.

The clinics were at UCI Medical Center in Orange and Garden Grove Hospital and Medical Center, formerly known as AMI/Garden Grove Medical Center. The UCI clinic shut down June 2 when UCI forced the doctors out.

All three doctors--Ricardo H. Asch, Jose P. Balmaceda and Sergio C. Stone--have denied knowingly engaging in misconduct.

UCI Chancellor Laurel L. Wilkening said Wednesday that the university is investigating whether the allegedly improper egg transplants involved a pattern of giving the healthy eggs of younger women to older patients with unusable eggs.

“That’s one of the things that we are trying to pursue now,” Wilkening said. “That certainly was the underlying premise of the egg donor program.”

The announcement is the first indication that the alleged improprieties at the Center for Reproductive Health were preceded by similar misconduct at the Garden Grove hospital and might have occurred as long as seven years ago. Two of the three UCI physicians under investigation in the fertility scandal operated a fertility clinic there from 1986 to 1990.

“It makes me sick to my stomach,” said one Orange County man who contends that his sperm and his wife’s eggs were taken from them at the UCI clinic in 1991 and implanted in another Orange County woman whose husband was infertile. A University of California investigative panel has substantiated the allegation.

“You try not to think about it and then you wake up at 3 o’clock in the morning hoping it’s not true. . . . It’s grotesque, and I think it was a regular ongoing thing,” the man said. “Not a day goes by that you don’t think of a child you have that’s not with you.”

Orange attorney Melanie Blum, who represents six clients whose eggs or embryos were allegedly misappropriated, said she believes one of the newly discovered cases involves one of her clients and resulted in the birth of a child to someone else. The woman underwent a fertility procedure at the Garden Grove clinic in 1988, Blum said.

“This woman has no biological children of her own, so you can imagine what this means to her,” Blum said.

In addition to improper egg use, the three doctors are accused of misappropriation of funds, insurance fraud and research misconduct at the UCI clinic. Asch is also accused of prescribing an unapproved fertility drug to some of his patients at the center, which once served 700 patients a year from all over the world.

A spokeswoman for Garden Grove Hospital and Medical Center, where the clinic affiliated with UCI closed in 1990, said Wednesday that a list of patients submitted to the hospital by the university Saturday suggested that 10 patients might have been victims of improper transfers.

“While we have no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of these doctors during their affiliation with Garden Grove Medical Center, we believe that the information UCI has described to us makes further review necessary and appropriate,” spokeswoman Marlene Burnett said in a prepared statement.

UCI officials say they took responsibility for announcing the developments involving both medical centers because of the university’s teaching affiliation with the Garden Grove clinic.

“I am surprised and dismayed at the magnitude” of the crisis, Golub said Wednesday. “I’m heartsick for these patients.”

The Garden Grove clinic, run by Asch and Balmaceda, closed in March, 1990, when the pair moved to UCI and Stone joined the practice. Stone is not suspected of wrongdoing at Garden Grove, but is under investigation for possible misconduct at UCI, Golub said.

The scandal also has reached UC San Diego’s fertility clinic, where Asch was under contract until last month. Two former patients there have alleged that Asch misappropriated their eggs.

Attorneys for all three doctors said they had not been informed of the new allegations and accused university officials of “grandstanding” to shift attention away from themselves.

“They say they are trying to ‘ascertain the truth,’ but knowing that truth has not yet been ascertained, they release a press release before they notify the physicians,” said Patrick Moore, Balmaceda’s attorney.

Moore said Balmaceda started a clinic at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills in 1989 and “has had his practice almost exclusively there since,” suggesting that Balmaceda could not have been responsible for alleged misconduct elsewhere between 1988 and 1992.

Stone’s attorney, Karen Taillon, said Stone never worked at Garden Grove, nor did he perform egg-transfer procedures, so he could not have been involved in any egg misuse.

Asch does not deny there “appear to be cases where there are problems,” said his attorney, Ronald G. Brower. “If the university has found 30 such cases, we’d be pleased to help them get at the truth and deal with the problem.”

Asch “doesn’t know what the source of the problem is, but he knows he has never knowingly used anyone’s eggs or embryos without permission,” Brower said.

Golub would not specify what new evidence of wrongdoing had emerged, saying only that it came in the form of documents and verbal information received by UCI since mid-June. He declined to reveal who supplied the documents, saying the sources had requested anonymity.

The doctors have refused to supply any “useful information,” Golub said. The physicians’ attorneys say, however, that they would turn over records to a court.

Golub said the university sent word of its findings to the approximately 30 new patients by hand-delivered letter over the July 4 holiday weekend. He said a team of counselors, drawn from UCI’s medical staff, is arranging to meet with the patients privately to discuss their concerns.

Some patients, however, might not yet have been contacted because they are out of the country or could not be located, Golub said.

Garden Grove Hospital and Medical Center is cooperating in the investigation, and both medical centers are working with law enforcement agencies already probing the fertility scandal, Golub said. At least seven investigations into the scandal are underway, including probes by the UCI police, the California Medical Board and the Orange County district attorney’s office.

Wilkening said due process for faculty members prevents the university from taking action against the doctors.

“We can’t put people in jail,” she said. “This really is in the hands of the other investigative agencies.”

In response to the new information, Golub said, UCI has reconvened a three-physician clinical panel that earlier this year discovered evidence of as many as five cases of improper transfers at the UCI clinic. The panel has said its inquiry was impeded by the doctors’ refusal to turn over key documents.

Some state officials wondered if the scope of the scandal stretches beyond the 35 patients and three hospitals identified so far. Asch and Balmaceda perform fertility procedures in other countries, including Mexico, Italy and Argentina.

Dixon Arnett, executive director of the California Medical Board, said Wednesday that he has suspected for some time that the initial allegations were “the tip of the iceberg.”

If the medical board finds “clear and convincing evidence” that any of the doctors violated the law, Arnett said, the agency “will immediately proceed to seek an interim suspension of their licenses.”

The board can take such step if it deems that a doctor poses an “imminent danger” to patients.

“I await the release of further information on this,” said state Sen. Tom Hayden, (D-Santa Monica), who chairs a Senate committee that held hearings on the UCI scandal June 14. “For all we know, it’s far more than 30. People all around the country and the world have reason to be suspicious and worried.”

Said Assemblywoman Jackie Speier, (D-South San Francisco): “It does bring us to the nadir of ethical transgressions and makes you wonder if this scandal will ever end.”

* SHOCK WAVES SPREAD: Hospital where doctors practiced is now part of chain. A19