Bills Would Stiffen Fertility Clinic Rules; UCI Alters Whistle-Blower Policy

A state assemblywoman introduced two bills Wednesday intended to prevent improprieties such as those alleged against UC Irvine fertility doctors by tightening regulations on clinical and financial practices.

Also in response to the fertility scandal, UC Irvine has begun implementing a revised whistle-blower policy spelling out in more detail how the university should respond to staff members’ complaints of improprieties by university staffers.

Assemblywoman Jackie Speier (D-Burlingame) introduced a bill that establishes a more rigorous procedure for obtaining patients’ consent to donate human eggs or embryos for implantation in other women.

Under that bill, a second physician would be required to witness a doctor’s effort to obtain consent and to watch the fertilization procedure. The statement of consent would have to be handwritten and the donor’s signature would have to be notarized, Speier said. Failure to abide by the terms of the proposed law could result in revocation of the physician’s license to practice medicine.

Another Speier bill--sponsored by the University of California--would expand an existing law, allowing the university to prosecute acts of fraud more easily.

This proposed law would impose triple damages and other penalties against anyone who engages in financial improprieties, including misuse of state property, within the University of California and the California State University system. Such fraud now is handled through an internal disciplinary process, Speier said.

Three doctors at the now-closed UCI Center for Reproductive Health have been accused by the University of California of stealing the eggs and embryos of scores of women and implanting them in others or using them in research. They also are accused of pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars in university money, engaging in research misconduct and committing insurance fraud.

The three deny any deliberate wrongdoing.

Speier said Wednesday that she sees the proposed legislation as both a deterrent to wrongdoing and a way of more effectively prosecuting crimes when they occur.

Speier’s bills are among several legislative responses to the scandal. Last week, state Sen. Tom Hayden introduced a bill that would make it a felony to misappropriate human eggs or embryos.

On the UCI campus beginning this week, officials will discuss an updated “whistle-blower” policy with faculty and staff in a series of meetings.

“Our procedures did not clearly describe how people could declare themselves whistle-blowers, whom they should notify, and what the review process was,” wrote UCI Chancellor Laurel L. Wilkening in a campus memo distributed Tuesday afternoon.

UCI’s whistle-blower policy was invoked in 1994 by three employees at UCI’s Center for Reproductive Health who accused the clinic’s physicians of stealing human eggs and embryos and misappropriating funds.

If the new policy had been in place, it probably would not have affected what allegedly occurred at the clinic, officials said. But, unlike the earlier policy, the new one explicitly states that the identity of a whistle-blower would be divulged to university personnel only on a “need-to-know” basis in order to carry out an investigation.

One UCI whistle-blower, Debra Krahel, has accused university officials of failing to protect her confidentiality.