Embryo scandal nets $24M

The UC Board of Regents has paid out $4.23 million over the past year to settle a dozen lawsuits stemming from a UC Irvine fertility clinic scandal a decade ago, a spokesman for the school said Friday.

Including the most recent settlements, the University of California has paid out more than $24 million for more than 130 incidents where eggs or embryos were either given to other women or could not be accounted for.

Three more cases are still pending.

“We made a commitment to treat these claims fairly and on their merit,” UCI spokesman John Murray said Friday. “Until the remaining cases have been dealt with, we’re not going to offer any more comment.”

In 1995, the Orange County Register first reported that for several years, UC Irvine’s Center for Reproductive Health had stolen eggs or embryos from couples undergoing fertility treatments there and given them to other women.

The two world-renowned fertility doctors in the case, Ricardo Asch and Jose Balmaceda, fled the country and were later indicted on charges of mail fraud and tax evasion. Neither doctor has ever stood trial.

Asch sold his Big Canyon Country Club home in Newport Beach soon after the scandal broke and fled to Mexico.

Balmaceda, a former Corona del Mar resident, fled to his native Chile.

Both doctors continue to practice medicine, as far as attorney Dan Hodes, who represents the couples who sued UCI over stolen eggs and embryos, knows.

Neither doctor is subject to extradition, he said.

Although Hodes believes the settlements have given his clients some sense of closure, many are still upset Asch and Balmaceda have never been tried in the case.

“I think on some levels it does [give them closure],” Hodes said. “But some still have a gnawing sense of injustice that the doctors involved escaped without recrimination.”