Hundreds Of Embryos Go Missing
Kelli Gora wanted to share her love for the outdoors and animals with a child of her own. Unable to get pregnant, she tried fertility treatments. They failed. But recently Kelli discovered she and her ex-husband may have a child after allone born to another woman, because Kelli claims her fertility clinic stole their embryos.
"I hope that the child, is getting a lot of those things in life that I could have provided," Kelli says.
Kelli was treated by doctors at the now-infamous University of California fertility clinics in Orange County. Five years ago the main clinic was shut down for misappropriating human eggs, reports CBS News Correspondent Sandra Hughes. Two of the doctors fled the country, another was found guilty of fraud.
But what Kelli and other patients didn't know back then was that the doctors were allegedly stealing their fertilized eggs, and giving those embryos to other couples.
"Certain people were favored and those people who had money and could pay were going to have children. It was the doctors playing God," says Orange County attorney Melanie Blum.
Blum uncovered clinic documents that she says reveal an alarming number of embryos are missing.
"There are hundreds of couples who have evidence of misappropriated embryos," Blums says. She claims that could translate to hundreds of children.
She found shipping records that indicate some of the embryos were sent as far away as South and Central America. Kelli Goras records show an embryo identified as hers was transferred to another southern California woman.
"She was probably sitting in the waiting room the same time I was," Kelli says.
Lawyers for the couples believe the university should be held accountable because they say it had to know doctors at the clinic were stealing the embryos.
"We didn't know anything of the kind," says John Lundberg, a lawyer for the school. "We're doing everything we can."
Embryos from the Irvine clinic are still stored in a west Los Angeles cryobank, which now wants to get rid of them. Just this week, former patients, reeling from the latest allegations, were told to come get their embryos or they would be destroyed.
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