UC San Diego Has Ended Its Fertility Probe

SAN DIEGO —  UC San Diego has halted its investigation into allegations that five women were involved in improper egg and embryo transfers at a clinic because the patients have rebuffed university inquiries, a university official said Monday.

Dr. Thomas Moore, acting chairman of UC San Diego’s Department of Reproductive Medicine, said the investigation had failed to turn up documents indicating that the eggs or embryos were transferred with the consent of the donors. But the university also has been frustrated in its attempts to learn whether the donors gave their consent orally.

“Since this information is not forthcoming, I have to stop and simply say that for these five [women], I cannot substantiate or negate whether there was unconsented transfer,” Moore said. “We’ve pushed as far as we could. . . . We’ve stopped now and will let the legal process take charge.”

Moore was referring to the fact that one of the female donors already has filed a damage suit against the university, contending that her eggs were transferred to another patient without her consent. And a second woman has served notice on her intent to file a similar suit.

In a scandal that surfaced at a fertility clinic operated at UC Irvine, three doctors have been accused of misappropriating the eggs and embryos of as many as 35 patients at the Irvine clinic and the former AMI/Garden Grove Medical Center.

One of the doctors, Ricardo H. Asch, is suspected by University of California officials of egg misappropriation at the UC San Diego clinic.

Ten patients already have filed lawsuits against UC Irvine.

Asch, as well as his partners, Drs. Jose P. Balmaceda and Sergio C. Stone, have denied any intentional wrongdoing.

The comments by Moore suggest that UC San Diego’s efforts to draw information from patients have met with even less success than UC Irvine’s. Since UCI began trying to contact about 30 patients this summer to discuss possible egg or embryo misappropriation at its Center for Reproductive Health, four made appointments to talk with university officials, and only three actually showed up.

“Patient information can be of enormous value . . . in finding out details about what patients understood of their care,” UCI spokeswoman Fran Tardiff said.

“Unfortunately many of these questions may now have to be addressed in court, because we haven’t been able to get the patients to come forward and do not have all of the documentary information that would help,” he said.

But attorneys for patients at UC San Diego said Monday that the University of California has not made sincere efforts to get to the bottom of the fertility scandal.

“It is a ruse for the university to suggest they cannot confirm the lack of consent, because [consent] can never be oral,” said Santa Monica attorney Larry Feldman, who represents a UC San Diego patient whose eggs allegedly were stolen. “It is always in writing.

“All the university has done so far has been to stall and delay,” Feldman said. “The university knows exactly what took place in that these eggs were taken without the consent of a host of women.”

Feldman said UC San Diego officials had never even asked him for information about whether his client consented to donate her eggs.

Moore, however, said UC San Diego tried for at least two months to investigate allegations that three donors and two recipients were involved in two unapproved transfers, making diligent efforts to contact patients. Three of the patients live outside the country, two in Mexico and one in Panama. Two alleged donors live in California.

KPMG Peat Marwick auditors found last July that there was no evidence to show that consent had been appropriately obtained for the two transfers, which took place in August, 1993, and August, 1994.

Feldman and an attorney representing another donor said Monday that they are convinced they will be able to prove in court that their clients’ eggs were stolen in a 1993 procedure in which a Mexican woman became pregnant. But both conceded that one issue may remain forever in doubt--whose eggs resulted in conception of the woman’s child.

The problem is that the Mexican woman not only received separate donations from the two women--she also received three frozen embryos from an unknown source. And neither Feldman nor the other attorney, Virginia Nelson of San Diego, knows where the Mexican woman or her child are.