Aide Whom Asch Blamed in UCI Case to Tell Her Side

IRVINE —  Teri Ord is a biologist with only a high school diploma. For more than a decade, she worked alongside Dr. Ricardo H. Asch, learning her craft from an internationally renowned fertility specialist, who brought her with him from Texas to California.

It was Asch as much as anyone, her attorney says, to whom Ord turned for guidance and insight. He was her mentor. And she was his indispensable aide.

Now, Asch is at the center of a scandal encircling his once-prestigious Center for Reproductive Health and its parent institution, UC Irvine. He and the university have been named in more than 40 lawsuits. Ord, 39, is named along with him in at least 11.

For the first time, Ord will answer for herself in four days of depositions scheduled to start Wednesday in San Antonio, where she lives with her newborn twins and her husband, a fertility specialist and former research partner of Asch.

In a series of depositions last month in Tijuana, Asch sought to portray Ord as the scapegoat for a litany of allegations involving scores of stolen eggs and embryos that have apparently resulted in three live births.

Only one word can describe how Ord is feeling, Marshall Silberberg, her lawyer, said last week.

“She feels betrayed,” he said. “She can’t believe this is happening or that he would do this to her.”

But Asch contends it is largely Ord who is to blame for any “errors” that occurred in his clinic. He and his partners, Drs. Jose P. Balmaceda and Sergio Stone, have consistently denied any deliberate malfeasance.

Long before Tijuana, Ord had supplied some of the most damaging evidence against Asch and Balmaceda to both criminal investigators and the university: embryology logs listing hundreds of patients who UCI officials say might have been involved in improper egg-swapping.

“The main thing that will emerge in San Antonio,” Silberberg said, “is that Ricardo Asch was completely in control. That all of the support staff for the center was carrying out his agenda and, certainly, Teri had no point or reason to do anything other than what she was instructed to do by him. It was entirely an Asch operation, and we can prove it.”

Plaintiffs’ attorneys say that Ord’s testimony is likely to be illuminating. Some describe her as a reservoir of knowledge who may know more about Asch than anyone realizes.

Others point to her having only a high school diploma as evidence of Asch’s tendency to skirt the rules; the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology requires that reproductive biologists hold, at minimum, a PhD degree. But at the same time, even attorneys for former patients speak of Ord as being candid and competent.

“Teri Ord prepared the documents that reflect what actually happened with the eggs taken directly from my clients--and from those of other plaintiffs,” said Joel Klevens, who, with his partner, Santa Monica attorney Larry Feldman, represents two couples who allege that their stolen reproductive material resulted in live births.

“She tracked the process in records,” Klevens said. “She’s the one who documented what happened. She also operated solely at the instruction of Ricardo Asch. She, potentially, is his most damaging witness.”

Asch, along with Balmaceda and Stone, is accused of taking the eggs and embryos of scores of women without their consent and implanting them in others. The three doctors 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 and are working at clinics in Latin America.

“Is Teri free of any wrongdoing? Absolutely,” said Silberberg, her attorney. “She was never involved with patients. She had no patient contact. She was never involved in obtaining consent. She never knew if a patient consented. That was not her job.

“It was purely Asch’s job, or the job of the other physicians. From a medical and legal standpoint, it had to be. Asch had to get the patients’ consent, had to make them aware of risks and potential complications. Nurses aren’t charged with that responsibility, and certainly, Teri never was.”

But plaintiffs’ lawyers don’t agree with that assessment. Newport Beach attorney Walter Koontz, who represents six couples who claim to be victims of egg or embryo stealing, called Ord “a very savvy lady” who knew as early as 1992 what was happening in Asch’s clinic. The alleged misdeeds took place from 1986 to 1994.

Koontz said Ord’s testimony “will be extremely damaging to Asch” but that, “definitely, she has culpability. From a common-sense point of view, she was the one preparing the test tubes, making sure that Mrs. X’s embryos or eggs were fertilized with Mr. Y’s semen and then placed into Mrs. Y. Ord’s ongoing role was an integral part of the process.”

Theodore Wentworth, who represents other former patients--including a couple who believe their stolen eggs were given to another woman, who then had twins--fears that Ord will go out of her way to protect not Asch but UCI, her former employer, which is paying her legal expenses.

“Teri Ord will probably do her best to perpetuate the conspiracy of silence, which is the medical conspiracy of silence . . . the medical good-old-boys’ club,” Wentworth said. “My opinion is that she’s going to dump things on Asch in order to save embarrassment to the university. For her, that seems the obvious way to go.”

If Asch’s misdeeds are found to be merely negligent, the university increases its risk of liability; if his activities are found to be malicious--outside the scope of his employment--then the university, which has declined to pay his legal costs--lessens its liability.

Thus Ord’s testimony is critical not only to Asch but also to UCI.

“I don’t think the university can possibly show that what Asch did was outside the scope of his employment,” Klevens said. “It was precisely within the scope. The university benefited financially from payments made to Asch and indirectly through his reputation.”

Byron Beam, the outside attorney hired to represent UCI, said he doesn’t know the extent of Ord’s culpability, if any.

“Not all the facts are on the table,” he said. “But [during the depositions] their entire relationship [Ord’s and Asch’s] will be thoroughly investigated.”

What Beam expects will happen is that Ord will “directly contradict Dr. Asch. She’s going to say that at no time did she transfer eggs from one woman to another without him directing her to do so. In my opinion, she will also say that never would she inseminate the eggs of one woman with the sperm of another woman’s husband without Dr. Asch directing her to do so. . . . When he wanted transfers, he told her what to do.”

In Tijuana, where Asch insisted he testify because he fears arrest in the United States, the doctor alleged it was Ord, who, on her own, decided to send embryos to Cornell University for use in a research project.

Those who attended the depositions said Asch also testified that he was not involved in overseeing donations at the clinics where he operated--not at UCI, and not at a formerly affiliated clinic in Garden Grove, where Ord joined up with him after meeting him at the University of Texas at San Antonio in the 1970s.

Asch said that Ord also made unilateral decisions about egg and embryo transfers.

“He laid the primary responsibility for the transfer of eggs onto other parties--nurses or biologists, such as Teri--rather than saying it was his decision,” said Klevens, one of the plaintiff’s attorneys. “One certainly doubts that Teri Ord made those decisions on her own. . . . One anticipates that she was given very clear instructions by Dr. Asch as to which patient’s eggs were to go where. I don’t think Ord would be able to make such decisions on her own. But we’ll certainly find out.”