A couple in New York gave birth to twin boys in March that were not genetically theirs after being implanted with the wrong embryos by a California fertility clinic.
A lawsuit filed this week by the couple, identified only as A.P. and Y.Z., details the harrowing experience of spending over $100,000 on in vitro fertilization treatments at the CHA Fertility Center to become parents after years of struggling to conceive. The couple, who are Asian American, were shocked when their newborns did not have any Asian features. Genetic testing confirmed that the babies were not related to either parent or even to each other. The embryos had come from two other couples who used the CHA Fertility Center. Heartbroken, A.P. and Y.Z. handed the babies over to their biological parents.
A.P. and Y.Z. first became concerned when a midpregnancy sonogram revealed the twins to be boys after the couple had thought their chosen embryos were girls. They alerted the CHA Fertility Center but were assured by co-owner Joshua Berger that the sonogram was not reliable testing and that the couple would give birth to girls as expected. Berger even shared an anecdote of inaccurate sonogram results in his own wife’s pregnancy.
But when A.P. gave birth to two boys in March, Berger and clinic co-owner Simon Hong traveled to New York to perform the genetic testing on the boys, which revealed there had been an “unimaginable mishap” during the course of the couple’s fertility efforts. The clinic was also not able to tell the couple what had become of the embryos they thought they were carrying. According to the lawsuit, A.P. and Y.Z. have been too upset to share what happened with friends and family.
The mishap at the hands of the CHA Fertility Center is not the only instance of IVF treatment going wrong for prospective parents. A similar lawsuit was filed in April against the Connecticut-based CT Fertility when a woman was implanted with the wrong embryo.
A woman in Ohio, Carolyn Savage, had used in vitro fertilization to conceive in 2009 only to be told by her clinic that they had mistakenly implanted another couple’s embryo. Savage carried the baby to term and gave him to his biological parents, becoming an unwitting surrogate.
The lawsuit against CHA Fertility Center details the heartache of A.P. and Y.Z., saying that the couple suffered “permanent emotional injuries from which they will not recover” and the lost embryos of their baby girls were “irreplaceable.”
