IVF clinic accidently kills embryos, implants them anyway as coverup

Nine couples are suing an Orange County IVF clinic after they claim the clinic killed their embryos and tried to cover up the mistake.

According to the couples’ lawyers at Marcereau Law Group and Ikuta Hemesath LLP, Ovation Fertility made mistakes at its Newport Beach laboratory, then “knowingly implanted dead embryos into would-be mothers and then tried to conceal the laboratory mistakes that had poisoned the embryos,” their lawyers said in a news release.

Specifically, the laboratory used “lethal hydrogen peroxide instead of distilled water during pre-implantation dethawing procedures in January 2024,” then “attempted a cover-up that sought to trick patients into signing waivers of legal claims and non-disparagement agreements,” the plaintiffs claim.

“Ovation Fertility only disclosed the incidents after the couples’ fertility doctors questioned why there was a 100 percent failure rate for the embryos that had been thawed over the two-week pre-implantation period, when the success rate was normally above 75 percent,” the release explained.

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/orange-county-ivf-clinic-accused-of-killing-embryos-implanting-them-anyway/

In the meantime, couples “blamed themselves and their bodies, some going so far as to endure risky and painful medical procedures, such as hysteroscopies and biopsies, to determine what went wrong,” the attorneys said.

Fullerton residents Brooke Berger and Bennett Hardy are among the plaintiffs after the error “destroyed our last two embryos,” Berger said.