Human Egg, Embryo Safeguards Proposed

In the strongest legislative response yet to the widening fertility scandal at UC Irvine, state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) introduced a bill Thursday that would make it a felony to transfer or implant human eggs and embryos without the informed consent of both donor and recipient.

Noting that human eggs were taken from at least 60 families without their permission, Hayden said prosecutors have been stymied in efforts to charge a once-elite team of fertility specialists because state law does not specifically address the taking of such material.

“There is a loophole in our criminal law which permits this unconscionable violation of a couple’s personal decision about what to do with their human eggs and embryos,” Hayden said in announcing the bill. “This clear ethical violation also needs to be punished by time in jail to put people on notice that informed consent must be obtained before medical personnel donate a woman’s eggs to another family.”

Hayden, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Higher Education, first convened hearings on the scandal last June, when an array of witnesses provided details into the stealing of eggs and embryos by doctors at the once-prestigious Center for Reproductive Health.

The physicians who ran the clinic--Ricardo H. Asch, Jose P. Balmaceda and Sergio Stone--are the subject of at least seven investigations into alleged misappropriation of eggs and embryos, insurance fraud and financial wrongdoing. All have denied any deliberate malfeasance.

Both natives of South America, Balmaceda and Asch have left the country and are working at medical clinics in Latin America. Asch, the former head of the clinic, recently gave an extensive deposition--in response to myriad civil suits--in Tijuana.

At least 35 former patients have sued Asch, UC Irvine, the UC Board of Regents or UC San Diego, where Asch assisted at a reproductive clinic and where, last month, he was accused of providing human reproductive tissue to a University of Wisconsin researcher without patients’ permission.

So far, neither Asch nor anyone else has been indicted in connection with the scandal, although the Orange County district attorney’s office as well as the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office have confiscated material from him and the other doctors being investigated.

Criminal investigators could not be reached for comment Thursday.

For Hayden’s bill to become law, it must pass both the Democratic-controlled state Senate, as well as the Republican-held state Assembly, where it may encounter efforts at compromise but apparently no opposition. Some changes, in fact, might seek to toughen the measure.

Hayden’s proposal would make the taking of human eggs without consent a felony punishable by three to five years in state prison, coupled with a fine of no more than $50,000.

Times staff writers Len Hall and Julie Marquis contributed to this story.