Fertility Clinic Sold Embryo, Woman Claims

An Orange County woman filed a lawsuit Friday claiming physicians from a now-defunct UC Irvine fertility clinic secretly took embryos made from her eggs and her husband’s sperm and implanted them in a South American woman for profit.

While a previous fertility scandal at the clinic revolved around women’s eggs being surreptitiously taken to be fertilized by other men, this suit is a new twist: alleging that the complete genetic material of at least one couple, and as many as 500 couples struggling to have babies, may have been sold.

Kelli Gora, a radiology technician in Tustin, told The Times she and her then-husband badly wanted to have children when they approached the UCI fertility clinic in 1993 to have her eggs fertilized. Physicians told Gora, 37, that one of the four embryos had not lived, she said. In reality, the suit filed in Orange County Superior Court on behalf of Gora and her former husband James Felt alleges, the “missing” embryo was subsequently sold to and implanted in an unknown woman.

Meanwhile, Gora received three fertilized eggs, which she and her attorney, Melanie Blum, allege were weaker than the one transferred to the South American woman.

“It’s unfortunate, because I think I have a lot to offer kids--I know I could provide a loving environment,” Gora said. “If I do have a child out there, I would be concerned that it has been brought up in a nice environment and that he or she is happy.”

The couple, now divorced, never had children.

The suit was filed against the UC Board of Regents, the former UCI Center for Reproductive Health and Drs. Ricardo H. Asch and Jose P. Balmaceda. Blum said she expects to file scores of similar lawsuits in the coming weeks.

UCI officials declined comment. John Lundberg, deputy general counsel for the UC Regents, said his office reviewed about 80 cases Blum presented with allegations based on claims that embryos were unaccounted for.

“I know she believed there were unconsented transfers,” Lundberg said. “In every case brought to our attention, we could account for all of the eggs and embryos. There were no eggs or embryos missing.”

However, Lundberg said he did not recognize Gora’s name and could not tell whether she was among the “accounted for” cases.

Blum said she intentionally did not provide Lundberg with the “strongest cases,” and criticized the UC system for using lawyers, instead of reproductive endocrinologists, to scrutinize the earlier files.

Although Gora and her ex-husband paid about $13,000 for the fertility treatments, Blum said a woman receiving someone else’s embryo--as the suit alleges--would probably pay about three times as much. She said she has been trying to locate the woman who received the fertilized embryo to determine if a child had been born.

“If there were a child,” Gora said, “I think I would tell the woman, ‘I’m sorry this happened to us. I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize what you have with this child. It wasn’t your fault, and it wasn’t the child’s fault.’ ”

Blum stressed the distinction between a fertilized embryo that is then transplanted and previous cases involving the clinic.

“When the scandal first broke, it involved cases of unfertilized eggs which were later fertilized by someone else’s sperm. This case involves embryos that could have been this couple’s own children,” said Blum.

As of last year, UCI had settled all 113 lawsuits stemming from the fertility clinic scandal that rocked its medical center in 1995. The university paid nearly $20 million to 107 infertile couples, including dozens who had their eggs stolen.

Federal charges were brought against Asch and Balmaceda, who fled the country, for stealing human eggs and planting them in unsuspecting women. Another doctor, Sergio C. Stone, was convicted on nine counts of mail fraud. He was also fired by the University of California Board of Regents. Attorneys for the men could not be reached.