UC San Diego Patients Drawn Into Fertility Scandal : Medicine: Officials say Dr. Ricardo Asch may have had a role in improper transfers of eggs of five women treated there. Legislator calls widening controversy ‘a nightmare that doesn’t end.’

SAN DIEGO — UC San Diego officials announced Friday that Dr. Ricardo H. Asch may have victimized at least five patients in a human egg-swapping scheme at the university, broadening the scope of the UC fertility scandal to 40 women at three Southern California medical centers.

The improper transfers from one patient to another at UC San Diego’s 2-year-old Assisted Reproductive Technologies Program appear to have involved three egg donors and two recipients and may have resulted in at least one pregnancy, said Dr. Thomas Moore, acting chairman of UC San Diego’s department of reproductive medicine.

“I can only speak as a physician about my profound concern and disappointment,” Moore said during a news conference in La Jolla.

“The concept that parts of our appropriated cells can be outside of ourselves and that these very special tissues are not maintained, husbanded and cared for in the most meticulous fashion. . . . Well, the very thought of that is unthinkable,” he said.

In a hint that the scandal could expand still further, UC San Diego officials acknowledged that they could not account for the disposition of 17 other patients’ eggs or embryos.

“This is like a nightmare that doesn’t end,” said Assemblywoman Jackie Speier (D-Burlingame), who chairs a consumer protection committee. If the charges prove true, “the ethics of this physician are of the lowest common denominator.”

Speier, who underwent fertility treatments years ago, said patients were horribly betrayed. “You are dealing with people who are emotionally raw,” she said. “And to place . . . this on these people is just heartless.”

In all, UC San Diego said it has concerns about 22 of the 155 patients treated at the clinic. University officials have not been able to reach five of the patients, three of whom apparently were involved in unapproved transfers, Moore said. Two of the three are from Mexico and one from Panama, he said.

One of the patients has already filed a notice of intent to sue Asch and the university system, Moore said. That patient has alleged her eggs were used to impregnate a woman who now has a year-old boy living in Mexico.

“This audit merely confirms what Dr. Asch told my client” in April, said the patient’s attorney, Larry Feldman. “On the other hand, it never ceases to amaze me how the university continues to hold press conferences rather than dealing directly with the patients and trying to ease their pain.”

Asch’s attorney, Ronald G. Brower, could not be reached Friday. He has previously denied that the doctor knowingly engaged in any unapproved egg transfers and has suggested that any mishaps were caused by staff members at the clinics where Asch worked.

UC San Diego’s announcement follows a monthlong investigation by outside auditors hired immediately after UC Irvine accused Asch and his two partners of human egg misappropriation and other improprieties at UC Irvine’s Center for Reproductive Health in Orange.

UC Irvine has since accused the three doctors of improper transfers involving 35 women at the Orange clinic and a now-closed affiliate in Garden Grove.

UC San Diego’s accusations targeted only Asch, who helped to establish the Assisted Reproductive Technologies center in 1993 and made four visits a year to treat patients. The other doctors did not practice there and no doctors or residents at UC San Diego are implicated in the alleged wrongdoing, officials said.

The outside auditors, KPMG Peat Marwick, found evidence not only of improper transfers at UC San Diego but also of possible unapproved use of frozen embryos from UC Irvine as well. Five frozen embryos from the UC Irvine clinic were given to the two recipients at UC San Diego, according to the auditors’ report, released Friday.

UC Irvine spokeswoman Fran Tardiff said she was not aware of the findings and declined to comment further.

Moore and other officials emphasized that the UC San Diego findings were preliminary and were part of only the first in a three-phase study of the fertility program that will also look at possible financial and research misconduct.

He noted that certain medical consent forms are missing from UC San Diego’s records and that until all patients are interviewed, the university cannot fully determine the extent of the problem.

“The purpose of our investigation is to fully identify every instance of intended or inadvertent procedures or documentary irregularities and to ensure that it never happens again at UCSD,” he said.

Officials inside and outside the UC system expressed profound dismay Friday at the widening crisis.

“Obviously, we are very concerned about the patients, the families and the circumstances,” said Cornelius Hopper, UC’s vice president for health affairs, who has organized a UC task force to study reproductive technology oversight in response to the crisis. “We are very unhappy about this happening to the university.”

“It’s a confirmation that this outrage is not isolated to the UC Irvine Medical Center,” said state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), chairman of a Senate committee looking into the fertility scandal. “Wherever Dr. Ricardo Asch has gone, he’s been promoted as a savior. . . . There’s been an apparent breakdown of oversight and that has resulted in an egregious moral breakdown.”