Aggregated News
Police cruisers typically escort heads of state, but on a November morning in 1995, the VIP heading down California's Highway 405 was an ordinary-looking moving truck. It was, however, carrying some particularly fragile cargo: several metal tanks, each just larger than a beer keg, containing a total of roughly 2,000 frozen human embryos. They were being transported from a scandal-plagued IVF clinic in Laguna Hills, Calif., to their new adoptive home in Newport Beach. Today, many still remain there, unclaimed. The embryos' unusual journey illustrates just how complicated the business of assisted reproduction can get.
The story starts at Saddleback Memorial Hospital in Laguna Hills. The fertility clinic there had been shuttered earlier in 1995, when an investigation found that its doctors had mixed up embryos and impregnated women with eggs that weren't theirs. As many as 300 patients were thought to have been involved, and at least three cases had surfaced in which women had unwittingly given birth to children not theirs. The clinic's top doctors, Ricardo Asch and Jose Balmaceda, had fled the county. Thousands of unused or...
The story starts at Saddleback Memorial Hospital in Laguna Hills. The fertility clinic there had been shuttered earlier in 1995, when an investigation found that its doctors had mixed up embryos and impregnated women with eggs that weren't theirs. As many as 300 patients were thought to have been involved, and at least three cases had surfaced in which women had unwittingly given birth to children not theirs. The clinic's top doctors, Ricardo Asch and Jose Balmaceda, had fled the county. Thousands of unused or...