Implications Left Physician Asking: ‘Why Me?’

The first UC Irvine doctor to be indicted in the human egg-switching scandal once likened his implication to Napoleon’s banishment to Elba.

“Why me?” Sergio C. Stone, a history buff, said during an interview last year. “What have I done?”

In a federal grand jury indictment unsealed Thursday, the 54-year-old doctor is charged with 10 counts of filing false medical insurance bills. He was arrested at his Villa Park home and will appear at a hearing in federal court today to determine whether he should be released.

An expert in reproductive endocrinology, Stone in 1986 recruited doctors Ricardo H. Asch and Jose P. Balmaceda, then budding superstars in reproductive medicine at the University of Texas, to California.

Four years later, UCI set the three up in a new medical pavilion. Within five years, more than 2,500 infertile patients from around the world, hoping for a medical miracle, sought them out.

Several months after allegations surfaced that the doctors misappropriated eggs from patients without their consent and implanted them in others, Asch and Balmaceda left the United States. Asch, a native of Argentina, is now practicing in Mexico City. Balmaceda, a native of Chile, returned home to Santiago.

Neither Asch nor Balmaceda were charged Thursday.

Stone “is very disappointed that they did it the way they did,” Stokke said of the arrest. “He had remained around knowing that an investigation was underway and that possible charges would be filed. All they had to say was, ‘Come on in,’ and he would have.”

Stokke said Stone and Asch recently had agreed to turn over patient files and other records to federal prosecutors.

Stone grew up in Chile, the son of an appellate judge. He went to USC in 1969 on a prestigious Ford Foundation Fellowship, then completed his residency at Louisiana State University.

Stone, who described himself as a Catholic who opposes abortion, said recently outside a court proceeding that he did not believe in tampering with human life. But he said he could reconcile his fertility work because he does not believe that embryos that had barely divided could be considered “a person.”

Curiously, Stone set out to develop a specialty in contraception, because of his belief that “there are too many people in the world.”

But by the time he joined UCI in 1978, he had become an expert in making babies, specializing in laser and microsurgery such as tubal ligation reversals.

The normally thoughtful, soft-spoken physician has actively participated during depositions in some 50 lawsuits that name him and his former partners.

During breaks, he chats amiably with attorneys, even those suing him.

“Dr Stone is a very likable, very friendly man,” said Melanie Blum, who represents more than a dozen former patients who have filed lawsuits. “I would imagine Dr. Stone knows an awful lot.”

During investigations, former staff members of the reproductive clinic where the doctors worked told investigators that Stone often had a short fuse. The doctor “throws charts, kicks walls,” a former medical assistant told investigators.

“He screams uncontrollably, clenches his fists, bangs on things and puts me in complete fear that he could physically harm me,” Marilyn Killane, a former staff worker, told investigators.

But Karen Taillon, who represents Stone on civil matters, has denied that the doctor ever lost his temper. A panel of physicians who investigated the doctors found no support for allegations that Stone was abusive to patients, but it did not address his behavior toward staff.

On Thursday, federal prosecutors charged Stone with trying to “illegally obtain money from insurance companies by falsely claiming he was assisted by other licensed physicians . . . when, in fact, he was not.”

In an interview last year, Stone said, “Show me one record I falsified, one letter I changed, one date of consultation I changed, and I will resign immediately in shame.”

Asked recently what he planned to do when the scandal finally ends, Stone said he would retire and pursue his passion: reading about history.