UCI Off to Good Start Toward Preventing More Scandals
The scandal that forced the closing of UC Irvine’s fertility clinic has sparked needed efforts at reform on campus and in the Legislature.
The newest weapon in the arsenal is a tightening of the university’s own procedures to monitor all research involving humans. The enhanced oversight would be a good attempt to stop another scandal from occurring. It would have made no sense for college officials to whistle in the dark and proclaim that because they had shut the UCI Center for Reproductive Research there was no chance of future research going wrong.
The former director of the clinic, Dr. Ricardo H. Asch, is still under investigation, as is his former associate, Dr. Jose P. Balmaceda. Another clinic doctor, Sergio C. Stone, has been indicted on charges of mail fraud. All three physicians have denied any intentional wrongdoing.
University officials have acknowledged that more than 70 women may have had their eggs or embryos misappropriated, resulting in at least seven live births.
UC Irvine, acting on the recommendations of a seven-member task force, will establish an office to give assistance to medical school faculty who are conducting all kinds of research on humans, not just in the reproductive field. In addition, a committee will provide continual faculty review of research policy and procedures. Another committee will police enforcement of all federal and state regulations regarding the faculty’s research.
The University of California has also ordered tighter controls over its four remaining fertility clinics, at Davis, San Diego, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The university’s actions were designed to avoid a repeat of the UC Irvine debacle; they were based on suggestions from a task force of medical, legal and ethics experts. One worthwhile change will be measures to make it easier to report wrongdoing and to ensure that fertility patients are properly informed of medical procedures.
UC Irvine was late in responding to fertility clinic problems after whistle-blowers reported the irregularities. All UC campuses need to pay heed quickly to any suggestions of wrongdoing, in any field.
The state Senate unanimously approved a bill by Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) last month to make it a crime intentionally to transfer eggs, sperm or embryos without written consent from donors and recipients. Hayden said current theft laws do not apply because the eggs cannot be assigned monetary value. Another measure by Assemblywoman Jackie Speier (D-Burlingame) would make it easier for the university to prosecute acts of fraud.
Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, a university regent and critic of the school’s handling of the scandal, said after the new rules for the four fertility centers were announced that it was shocking they had not been in place from the beginning.
He was right about that. But the university appears finally to have conducted a thorough investigation of what went wrong and how to stop it from happening again. With so much research being done at UC campuses, the toughest protections need to be in place.
Helping men and women live longer, defeat diseases and give birth are laudable goals. But those who seek medical and scientific assistance also need special attention at difficult moments in their lives. Doctors need to be sure their patients are fully informed about what is happening. Consent forms must be explained, in language patients understand. There must be checks on the process, and a monitoring of changing technology and procedures.
That may require some changes in how doctors and their assistants do their work. But medical consumers are becoming more educated and demand better explanations of their treatment. California’s vaunted university has to be in the vanguard of doing things the right way; it cannot afford another scandal like the one UCI has endured.
