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858-748-4244Audit finds human eggs missing from defunct donor firm - SanLuisObispo.com
Wait a minute….now, the media is assuming alot more here than they should be. An audit? Let’s not make this official as if we have Ernst Young auditing these files. See below, and what say you? - Theresa Erickson
The Associated Press
SANTA FE SPRINGS, Calif. –
An audit of a now-bankrupt egg donor firm found that thousands of eggs and hundreds of embryos may be missing and unaccounted for, according to a report published Wednesday.
Options National Fertility Registry, once one of the nation’s largest egg-donor registries, went out of business in 2003 after an egg donor sued the company, alleging a doctor had given her eggs to a couple without her knowledge.
The lawsuit prompted the Santa Fe Springs-based company to check every “post-cycle” report it had received from doctors during a 10-year period. The most recent audits of those reports suggest that 2,189 eggs and 596 embryos were unaccounted for, The Orange County Register said.
Those cases involve 229 donors and 102 physicians at some of the nation’s most prominent infertility clinics, the newspaper said.
A spokesman for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine told the newspaper the audit results did not prove wrongdoing by the firm or the fertility doctors who used its eggs but could be the result of poor record-keeping.
“This is a program that has been in bankruptcy for years, and it’s not surprising there might be discrepancies in the record-keeping,” said spokesman Sean Tipton. “I don’t think there’s any indication of wrongdoing by doctors.”
To donors, the unaccounted-for eggs and embryos mean there might be children somewhere they do not know about.
One woman who donated her eggs through Options five times said she doesn’t know the fate of four embryos created from her eggs. The woman, who was not fully identified by the Register, knows of twins that were conceived with her eggs but now wonders if other children were conceived using her extra eggs.
Options was formed in 1992 and filed for bankruptcy in 2005. At its height, it had 22 employees, contracts with hundreds of doctors and handled 60 to 80 donations per month. It earned about $2,600 for each donation.
How is it that a longstanding “REGISTRY”, not a physician’s office or donor bank is being called into question for its record keeping accountability?? The doctor that was sued in the same lawsuit as OPTIONS National Fertility Registry was found guilty of malpractice. OPTIONS was not. OPTIONS was a records and personal liaison faciltity - that’s all they did. A registry would have nothing to gain from missing eggs and missing embryos. Doctors are so revered in todays society that even in articles written by attorneys, they are deemed infalable. What’s the deal? Money is the root of whatever eveil exists here and since OPTIONS is no longer and the Doctors are the ones being threatened…who do you suppose is in the wrong? My money’s on the physicians…if they have nothing to hide - provide their own copies of the audits for the conflicting cycles.
Comment by Rory — April 8, 2008 @ 11:32 pm