I would like everyone to read this article, and comment on how you feel about it. I am concerned with the inaccuracies, and I will be writing a press release to address this.
The Orange County Register by Teri Sforza
More than 100 fertility doctors in dozens of states may have brokered unauthorized transfers of human eggs, according to the bankruptcy court filing of a local company and its former records supervisor. Options National Fertility Registry was forced out of business in 2003 after getting caught up in a tangle of lawsuits in Texas, the court filing says. An Options donor, identified only as "Elizabeth," had contracted to donate her eggs to one infertile couple, and later learned that the doctor gave some of her eggs to a second couple without her knowledge, permission or consent, the bankruptcy documents say. Elizabeth sued, and settled with the doctor out of court. In the wake of this revelation, Options, of Santa Fe Springs, combed through every "post-cycle" report it received from doctors over a dozen years of business. Those reports detail how many eggs each donor produced, and what became of those eggs. Options initially found that 83 egg donation arrangements contained discrepancies and irregularities in the number of eggs retrieved, fertilized, transferred, frozen and/or disposed of. "To put it simply, there are many eggs and embryos that are unaccounted for," the bankruptcy petition says. Some doctors refused to provide post-cycle reports at all, said Melinda Lansford, Options' medical records supervisor for six years. More recent audits of Options' records suggest that there were 596 embryos, and 2,189 eggs, unaccounted for. More than 300 post-cycle reports had irregularities, involving 80 medical facilities, 102 physicians and 229 donors. "I wanted to help people have children, and I believed that this whole business was about the same thing," Lansford said. Lansford agreed to speak on the record Saturday after years of keeping a low profile because she has recently been diagnosed with an aggressive form of thyroid cancer. "I consider it a wake-up call," she said. "This needs to be known. I couldn't go on knowing that these women weren't aware of what's going on, and that the children resulting from these arrangements would have no link to their genetic roots." Options owner Teri Royal referred questions to her attorney, who could not be reached for comment late Saturday. The situation bears an eerie resemblance to the fertility fraud scandal at UC Irvine a dozen years ago. Then, doctors took eggs from fertility patients without their permission, and gave those eggs to other women, at least a dozen of whom later gave birth. "If it's true, it certainly would be a major scandal," said Arthur Caplan, chair of the department of medical ethics and director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "They call these egg donations, but these are egg sales. But even when you agree to sell your eggs, you're agreeing to a specific purpose and a specific couple. As we saw with the UCI problems, people might have reasons for not making their eggs available to certain other people. They do have the right to control the disposition of their eggs. "It's not the same as stealing a whole embryo to make a baby," he said. "But you're supposed to know where things are going and it's absolutely important that the system can account for it and make sure it goes where it's supposed to go. If doctors are making deals on the side and moving them around ? for teaching, research purposes, whatever ? that is a violation of informed consent." Criminal laws changed in the wake of the UCI scandal, but they don't apply here. "The laws that passed say, 'Don't steal embryos.' They don't apply to eggs. There is no explicit law," Caplan said. Options was once one of the nation's largest egg-donor registries, a service linking egg donors with infertility patients from coast to coast. Options had 22 employees, contracts with more than 500 doctors all over the country, and handled 60 to 80 donations per month. The company earned about $2,600 for each donation. It was formed in 1992 and paid close attention to the UCI scandal in 1995, making doctors sign contracts acknowledging the exclusivity of the arrangement during each donor cycle. According to a civil lawsuits filed in Harris County, Texas, Dr. Michael Allon of Texas did not pay those contracts much attention. The suit says Howard McBride and Novella Rhodes McBride got Elizabeth's eggs without Elizabeth's knowledge. They became pregnant with twins, miscarried, and sued Allon, Options and others after they were refused access to the remaining frozen embryos, which had been fertilized with Howard McBride's sperm. Allon told the McBrides that the patients who had contracted with Elizabeth for an egg donation ? identified as "Mr. and Mrs. Doe" ? didn't have the money to complete the transaction, the suit says. Allon suggested that the McBrides split the cost of Elizabeth's cycle, and the resulting eggs, with the Does. "Dr. Allon assured Ms. Rhodes-McBride that it was legal and that physicians are actually encouraged to promote egg sharing among patients," the suit says. In a cross-claim, Options said that this scandal harmed its reputation and led to its ultimate destruction. It filed for bankruptcy in October 2005. Audits of its records done since the bankruptcy filing suggest that the scandal is even larger than originally believed, involving 102 doctors and more than 500 unaccounted-for eggs. "It's inconceivable to me that any doctor would do something like this after the UCI scandal," said Lansford, Options' records supervisor. "Nobody realized it wasn't an isolated incident, that it could be an industry-wide practice. It has happened once (with Allon), and appears to have happened several more times." Lansford said she didn't recognize the discrepancies in the records at the time. "I was no expert," she said. "I'm not qualified to tell what is off and what is not." Her job was to collect and file the post-cycle reports, detailing what happened to the donors' eggs and embryos. The purpose was not to evaluate or double-check doctors' work, but simply to keep track of how donors responded to treatment, and who might be called on for more donations later. There could be many reasons why the numbers would be off, she said. Some of the eggs harvested may have been unusable or damaged. Some may have failed to divide after being fertilized. Some of the fertilized eggs may have stopped dividing. But, in some of the post-cycle reports, the difference between the number of eggs retrieved and the number of embryos created is as high as 50 percent. "The fact that they didn't add up poses questions," she said. One post-cycle report, for example, lists the number of eggs retrieved as nine, the number of eggs fertilized as two, the number of embryos transferred as two and the number of embryos frozen as two. How there could be four embryos ? two transferred and two frozen - when only two eggs were fertilized, is one of the unanswered questions. Lansford's hope is that explicit laws will be enacted to make unauthorized egg transfers a crime, and urges others with knowledge of these to come forward. "My concern is not just about Options, but about all the other donors from other agencies who thought they were working with just one couple. How can we ever know how many children are out there?" Lansford said. "I'm afraid of repercussion. But legislation needs to be written to protect donors and the children. Nobody seems to care. Nobody wants to get involved. I had to say something. Somebody has to do it."
Egg irregularities The following are donor numbers of women who donated eggs through OPTIONS National Fertility Registry, whose cycles had suspected irregularities. Women should check their contracts; if their number is on the list, they should request copies of their medical records.
http://www.ocregister.com/news/eggs-options-doctors-1782305-embryos-egg
