Fertility Doctor Lashes Out at UC Irvine, News Media

MEXICO CITY —  In his first wide-ranging interviews about the UC Irvine fertility clinic scandal, former clinic director Dr. Ricardo H. Asch lashed out Monday at what he called a vengeful university and a willingness among the media to believe the accusations against him.

“I blame all of you,” the doctor told reporters.

Appearing well-rested, Asch portrayed himself in back-to-back media interviews throughout the day as bewildered and betrayed. From a couch in a Mexico City hotel room, he spoke passionately of his derailed career and disrupted family life, making what he called his last effort to set the record straight.

Behind him, as a backdrop, was a collage of photographs--carefully arranged by his media-savvy attorney--displaying the smiling faces of children the fallen fertility specialist helped to create.

UC Irvine officials were not immediately available for comment.

Asch, 48, is accused, with his two former partners, of stealing the eggs and embryos of scores of women and giving them to other patients or using them in research. At least seven births may have resulted from improper transfers, university officials allege.

Federal officials are investigating allegations that the doctors have engaged in mail fraud, tax evasion and fertility-drug smuggling, but no charges against the three have been announced. All three doctors have denied wrongdoing.

Far from being the major perpetrator, Asch said he too is one of the scandal’s victims.

He said he had to sell his houses and his cars in the United States, and leave his Santa Ana practice and his country last fall because he and his family have been so maliciously attacked.

He, his wife, Silvia, and three of his five children are now living in Mexico City where, Asch says, he is teaching and doing research.

“To me, it’s a tremendous change of life that I don’t think I deserve. I have given all my life over to helping people have children and to work in an academic environment to improve the field of reproductive medicine. . . . I hope this is what people are going to remember me for . . . and not about these things that I don’t bear full responsibility [for.]”

The doctor had few words of solace for patients, especially for the about 40 women suing him.

“My opinion is that there are many cases of people that don’t have a case and they are jumping on the bandwagon . . . to try to use the opportunity for their own financial benefit rather than to create justice,” he said.

Asch said he had “absolutely not” ever intentionally transferred eggs and embryos to other patients or researchers without the donors’ consent.

“If I have ever done that, you know, by mistake, well, I feel very sorry,” he said.

Repeating testimony he gave at his sworn deposition in Tijuana last month, however, Asch said he had not considered it his responsibility to check or to track patient consent forms. That, he said, was the responsibility of university-employed nurses, whom he declined to identify.

Again and again, Asch said he has been treated unfairly by a news media too eager to accept the university’s version of events.

“What I am amazed [about] is . . . during all of this process, from the moment it became public, I have not heard of any of the good things that I have done in life--never. I think there is a campaign to try and destroy my reputation rather than trying to present what Asch, the man, both as a professor at UCI and now, did . . . for science and the community.”

The doctor reserved most of his criticism for UC Irvine, saying it was the university’s “sloppy” management and mistakes by its employees that gave rise to the scandal.

“I feel [university officials] know the mistakes that were done, and I’m sure they know intimately their responsibility in this. . . . They want to find a scapegoat in me,” Asch said.

Byron Beam, a lawyer who represents UC Irvine on the fertility matter, rejected the notion that the university is making Asch the scapegoat.

“It’s totally absurd,” he said. “The man is the architect of his own situation.”

He said that Asch had final say in hiring employees at the clinic and that Asch retained the right to control and direct the staff.

“The university simply paid them,” he said.

Beam said UC Irvine provided the facility and equipment, but that Asch ran the operation as he saw fit. “It was basically his operation.”

Officials have declined to pay for Asch’s defense, saying he acted well outside the scope of his employment by allegedly stealing patient eggs and embryos and engaging in massive fraud.

That visibly rankles Asch, as well. He said Monday he is running out of money for his own defense.

“The university has that responsibility, to pay for my defense,” under the terms of his contract, Asch said.