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California Couple Sue Fertility Doctor Over ‘Lost’ Embryos

August 24th, 2011

What a mess, and, of course, these children, wherever they are, IF they are, will have no idea WHO they are.

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Alex Walterspiel and Melanie Waters, a married couple in their 30s, conceived their 3-year-old son through in vitro fertilization and hoped to get pregnant again with one of the remaining frozen embryos.

But when the California couple returned in 2011, they said, the clinic told them the fertilized embryos were gone.

Their fear is that the three remaining embryos were “most likely” implanted in another woman’s womb, according to a lawsuit filed in the Superior Court of Los Angeles Aug. 17.

“They are torn apart by this,” the couple’s lawyer, Andrew Vorzimer, said. “It’s the worst possible nightmare for parents on both sides.”

Now, the couple is suing reproductive endocrinologist Dr. John Jain individually and as the president of Santa Monica Fertility, the clinic where the alleged mix-up occurred. They are seeking compensation to achieve another pregnancy and $500,000, plus punitive damages for professional negligence, breach of contract, emotional distress and fraud.

“Where the genetic parents are, we have no idea,” Vorzimer, a reproduction lawyer, said. “Part of the litigation is to go back and try to trace where these embryos went. Ultimately, it may require every patient who has undergone an IVF cycle with John Jain to have genetic testing of the babies.”

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  1. August 25th, 2011 at 11:25 | #1

    That’s enough! Time to shut down IVF clinics. They are one of the main reasons insurance premiums are going up, along with the costs of drug research and AIDS cocktails. All of which are things we shouldn’t have to be paying for.

  2. August 25th, 2011 at 11:42 | #2

    The lawyer says they’re going to have to test all the babies that this clinic made, to see if this couple’s child was given to another mother. I’m surprised they don’t already do a simple paternity and maternity test on all babies, and record the result on the Birth Certificate, to confirm that the person listed as the mother and father is really the mother and father. Tests are pretty cheap and reliable, aren’t they? It’s not right to put incorrect or possibly incorrect information on the official record, people have a right to know who their progenitors are, to the extent possible. That happens all the time when a woman seeks child support, a whole bunch of people might be forced to provide DNA, just based on the mother’s claim.)

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