Ex-Asch Aide Tells of Early Suspicions of Egg Misuse

Teri Ord, a biologist who worked closely with Dr. Ricardo H. Asch for more than a decade, testified here Wednesday that she suspected as early as 1991 that there were serious breaches of medical ethics within UC Irvine’s scandal-torn fertility clinic.

But she kept her concerns to herself even after leaving the university three years later.

Attorneys who witnessed Ord’s first day of testimony, which the news media were barred from viewing, reported that she became suspicious about whether certain patients had consented to egg or embryo transfers but never aired her concerns with Asch or his medical partners because she feared for her job.

Asch contends that university employees are largely to blame for any “errors” that occurred in the clinic. Ord, however, testified that it was impossible for improper egg transfers to be mere accidents.

After a full day of testimony Wednesday, attorneys said it was Ord who offered the most credible--and damaging--testimony that anyone has heard against Asch, whom Ord described as a master of fear and intimidation.

“He was the boss. He was in charge,” she said in a brief interview after Wednesday’s session. “He told me what to do.”

Even gently raising her concerns with a man who was both friend and mentor--he had brought her with him from Texas to California in 1986--was an area she nervously avoided.

“You didn’t ask Dr. Asch things like that,” she said. “You didn’t question what he did. I never questioned him. I couldn’t go and accuse a good and famous doctor of something I had no proof of. He was very clearly telling me specifically what to do. It wasn’t my place to question him. I didn’t have any firsthand knowledge. I didn’t know for sure.

“To go against my boss, who was running the practice, who also was very well known, very well respected. . . . I mean, he knows the entire IVF [in vitro fertilization] world.”

What it came down to, she said, was a lack of proof.

“The nurses never knew for sure either. We didn’t know, for example, whether he had gotten verbal consent from the patient--and just didn’t tell anybody. We just didn’t have proof,” she said.

The attorneys who witnessed Wednesday’s deposition said that Ord left some doubt about her own role at the clinic. But she clarified for them the role of Asch, the principal player in the drama. In their opinion, Asch will find it hard to dispute her testimony.

“She clearly refuted the lip service that Dr. Asch has been giving to most of the United States about the fact that he knew nothing about the alleged misdeeds, or negligence, or failings on the part of his staff,” said Walter Koontz, an attorney representing some plaintiffs in more than 40 lawsuits.

“Teri Ord,” Koontz said, “was very credible in her testimony that Asch controlled the ship. He was the captain--she took orders from him and no one else.”

Wednesday marked the first of four days of Ord’s deposition, which is taking place at a San Antonio law firm.

Ord, 39, lives in San Antonio with her newly born twins, a boy and a girl, and her husband, a fertility specialist and former research partner of Asch’s.

Her former boss and his two partners, Drs. Jose P. Balmaceda and Sergio Stone, are accused of taking the eggs and embryos of scores of women without their consent and implanting them in others. They are the subject of seven separate investigations.

UCI also has accused them of insurance fraud, financial wrongdoing and research misconduct. Asch and Balmaceda have left the country. Asch works in a clinic in Mexico City and Balmaceda lives in Chile. University officials say at least seven live births have resulted from misappropriated eggs and embryos.

In that regard, Ord testified that while she kept meticulous records for Asch and the Center for Reproductive Health, she had no knowledge of which patients consented to have eggs and embryos removed and never played a role in the unauthorized transfer of reproductive material.

If such material were transferred without a patient’s consent, only the patient’s doctor could have ordered it and carried out the procedure, she said.

But some attorneys were skeptical about what Ord knew and didn’t know.

“It is blatantly apparent that Teri Ord knew that improper egg transfers were taking place, based upon her observations and discussions with other clinic staff personnel,” said Lawrence Eisenberg, who is representing several plaintiffs in the case. “As the lead biologist and director of the fertility laboratory and paid employee of [UCI Medical Center], Ms. Ord had a duty to bring the issue to the attention of the appropriate university officials.

“The fact that she was afraid that she could be fired by Dr. Asch is insufficient justification to sit back and do nothing,” Eisenberg added. “Her inaction constitutes negligence for which the university will ultimately be held responsible.”

Marshall Silberberg, Ord’s attorney--who is being paid entirely by UCI--said that Ord is completely free of culpability, noting that from a legal standpoint only a physician could be empowered to obtain consent from a patient for an egg or embryo transfer and that Ord never played such a role, since it fell outside the parameters of her tasks.

Asch said Monday in Mexico City that nurses, whom he declined to identify, were responsible for obtaining patients’ consent for transfers.

Ord’s testimony is considered crucial in the scandal encircling the now-defunct fertility clinic and its parent institution, UCI, because she worked so closely with Asch, whom she met in the 1970s at a medical facility in San Antonio. A biologist with only a high-school diploma, Ord learned her craft from Asch, working with him here and then in Garden Grove before moving to UCI.

Ord has supplied key evidence to federal investigators and the university, including a list of more than 200 patients involved in egg and embryo transfers. At least 60 of those patients may be victims of improper transfers, officials said. Eisenberg said that Ord indicated during her testimony that she compiled the list partly to protect herself in case a scandal erupted.

Told that Asch had complimented her in an interview in Mexico City on Monday, Ord said, “Well, it’s nice he said I was very skilled, but I don’t believe I did anything wrong. At this point in time, I’m just sad that it’s come to this, because he’s blaming me for everything, from what I understand. I’m proud of the work; I think I did a good job. I never--intentionally or unintentionally--did anything wrong.”

Ord said it was impossible that nurses or lab technicians “out to get him” could have masterminded Asch’s downfall.

“We don’t see patients,” Ord said in describing the work of lab technicians. “We don’t know how to prepare people for [egg] transfers. We don’t know how to do transfers, so we can’t. A nurse couldn’t have done it either.”

She said it was also inconceivable that mistakes were the cause of the controversy.

“We had so many safeguards set up to ensure that such a thing never happened,” she said. “That would have been completely impossible.”

But regarding consent forms, Ord said she didn’t know what safeguards existed. “I had nothing to do with that. I handled sperm, eggs, any embryo. I have no idea about the clinical part. There were safeguards in the lab to make sure we didn’t transfer the wrong eggs to the wrong person. As far as deciding which eggs should go to which patients, the only orders I’ve ever gotten from that was from the doctors. They would just say, ‘Take these eggs and give them to these patients.’ ”

Despite her insistence that she knew nothing about whether patients had consented to the transfers of eggs and was merely following the doctors’ orders, some of the lawyers were skeptical. They also were baffled about why she would have ignored a perceived wrongdoing.

“I’m just surprised the issue of consent never came up in Teri Ord’s work,” said Joel Klevens, who with his partner, Santa Monica lawyer Larry Feldman, represents several plaintiffs. “Here you have her orchestrating transactions by which eggs were taken from one patient and donated to another--but the question of consent never comes up?

“Not only was Teri Ord not raising that question herself; it means the doctors who were telling her to transfer eggs from patient A to patient B were not making inquiries--of which she was aware--about whether or not there were consents for these transfers.”

Ord’s testimony will continue today.

* AUDITOR DEMOTED: UC Irvine seeks to strengthen office in wake of scandal. B7