Medical Justice provides free consultations to doctors facing medico-legal obstacles. We have solutions for doctor-patient conflicts, unwarranted demands for refunds, online defamation (patient review mischief), meritless litigation, and a gazillion other issues. We also provide counsel specific to COVID-19. If you are navigating a medico-legal obstacle, visit our booking page to schedule a free consultation – or use the tool shared below.

The world of IVF is fraught with emotional highs and lows. “Congrats, you’re pregnant” is some of the most exhilarating words a new family will hear. Particularly, when getting pregnant was a struggle.

In February 2023, A North Texas couple sued a fertility clinic allegedly for using the wrong sperm.

Camille and Derrick Bryan were treated in Fort Worth clinic. There, eggs were retrieved, and sperm captured. In March 2016, embryo transfer was performed, and nine months later, she gave birth to a boy. In 2018, Camille had a second successful embryo transfer, and delivered a baby girl nine months later.

A pediatrician commented on the son’s birthmark, one often seen in children of Asian descent. The family tested their son’s DNA. The results excluded Derrick as the father.

Wait, there’s more.

The lawsuit added that DNA tests showed Derrick was not the biological father of either child.

What happened?

Too soon to tell and the legal case was just filed.

Regardless, the Bryans say they love the children as their own. They just want to prevent such problems from happening to others.

Onward to Pasadena, California. Jason and Melissa Diaz had a son conceived at California IVF clinic. Jason was a cancer survivor. In 2018, he developed rare stomach cancer – hereditary diffuse gastric cancer. Two aunts had died of stomach cancer in their 40s. The family wanted an analysis of embryos so that they could exclude implantation of any with the deadly gene.

All the embryos were supposedly tested for the cancer gene. In 2020, one embryo was transferred, but ends in miscarriage.

The family was allegedly told another embryo was missing the gene. In January 2021, this embryo was transferred, and the child was born in September.

The family recently learned their son does have the deadly gene, and will need surgery to remove the stomach, at some point.

The clinic stated:

“We deeply empathize with this family’s situation,” adding that the Diazes “wished to have a male embryo transferred, which we carried out according to the family’s explicit wishes and in accordance with the highest level of care.”

It’s not clear if the clinic is laying out the defense that the family was aware that a remaining embryo had the cancer gene, and, despite that information, wanted that embryo implanted. That seems hard to believe, given the family supposedly sought care to identify embryos without the cancer gene. If that is indeed what happened, I’d expect the paper trail to be a mile deep that the family had knowledge and provided consent.

IVF is an effective tool to identify select embryos at risk for specific diseases.

Basically, PGD involves extracting a single cell from an eight-cell embryo (created via in vitro fertilization) and analyzing the DNA of that single cell for the presence of one or more disease-associated genetic alterations. Then, only those embryos without the disease mutation are implanted in the mother’s uterus.

Introduced into clinical care in the early 1990s, Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) was first used for determining the sex of embryos to minimize the likelihood of transmitting fatal sex-linked disease genes to offspring. If there were a family history of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), for example, parents might choose to undergo embryo screening to identify female versus male embryos and then have only the female embryos implanted. (DMD is a recessive X-linked disease that affects mostly males.) Since the 1990s, clinical use of PGD has expanded from embryo sexing to single-gene diagnostic testing, such as for Huntington’s disease. Today, reproductive clinicians regularly use PGD to diagnose some 170 different conditions, with two of the more common being cystic fibrosis and hemoglobin disorders (e.g., Cooley’s anemia).

From capturing sperm and eggs to analyzing genes in embryos, to eggs/embryos accidentally thawing prematurely, so many things can go wrong with IVF.  Fortunately, the news “Congrats, you’re pregnant”, is good news, and stays good news.

Perhaps one answer is to treat the process no differently than doing a time- out before a surgical procedure. Confirm right patient, right side, right level. In this case, right sperm, right egg, right pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. And have two people sign off on clearance.

What do you think?

Medical Justice provides free consultations to doctors facing medico-legal obstacles. We have solutions for doctor-patient conflicts, unwarranted demands for refunds, online defamation (patient review mischief), meritless litigation, and a gazillion other issues. We also provide counsel specific to COVID-19. If you are navigating a medico-legal obstacle, visit our booking page to schedule a free consultation – or use the tool shared below.

Jeffrey Segal, MD, JD

Chief Executive Officer and Founder

Dr. Jeffrey Segal, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Medical Justice, is a board-certified neurosurgeon. Dr. Segal is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons; the American College of Legal Medicine; and the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. He is also a member of the North American Spine Society. In the process of conceiving, funding, developing, and growing Medical Justice, Dr. Segal has established himself as one of the country’s leading authorities on medical malpractice issues, counterclaims, and internet-based assaults on reputation.

Dr. Segal was a practicing neurosurgeon for approximately ten years, during which time he also played an active role as a participant on various state-sanctioned medical review panels designed to decrease the incidence of meritless medical malpractice cases.

Dr. Segal holds a M.D. from Baylor College of Medicine, where he also completed a neurosurgical residency. Dr. Segal served as a Spinal Surgery Fellow at The University of South Florida Medical School. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa as well as the AOA Medical Honor Society. Dr. Segal received his B.A. from the University of Texas and graduated with a J.D. from Concord Law School with highest honors.

In 2000, he co-founded and served as CEO of DarPharma, Inc, a biotechnology company in Chapel Hill, NC, focused on the discovery and development of first-of-class pharmaceuticals for neuropsychiatric disorders.

Dr. Segal is also a partner at Byrd Adatto, a national business and health care law firm. Byrd Adatto was selected as a Best Law Firm in the 2023 edition of the “Best Law Firms” list by U.S. News – Best Lawyers. With over 50 combined years of experience in serving doctors, dentists, and other providers, Byrd Adatto has a national pedigree to address most legal issues that arise in the business and practice of medicine.