Doctor of Octomom Charged with Negligence
Posted on 04. Jan, 2010 in News Stories
Remember the “Octomom” from last year? To jog your memory, she (Nadya Suleman) gained nation-wide attention when she gave birth to octuplets (8 babies!) last January, even though she was already the mother of 6 children. This brought her to a total of 14 children conceived through in-vitro fertilization (IVF). Well, apparently her fertility doctor has been under investigation since then. It just came to public light that the California State Medical Board accused him of gross negligence in December.
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Here’s what happened: typically, a during IVF, not all fresh embryos retrieved are used immediately. A couple or so are implanted into the woman, and the rest are frozen for possible future use. Contrary to standard practice, Dr. Michael Kamrava (her doctor) kept retrieving fresh embryos instead, even though there were frozen ones from his patient he could have used. By harvesting embryos from Nadya over and over again, he unnecesssarily increased her medical risk.
Not only that, he implanted many more embryos than is recommended by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine (which is 2 embryos each time for a woman as young as Nadya). Consequently, this caused the inordinate birth of 8 babies by a single woman at the same time.
The Board questions (and I am sure they are not alone in asking) why Dr. Kamrava did not refer Nadya for a mental evaluation. Why? Well Nadya repeatedly kept asking for more IVF procedures to be done–merely a few months after giving birth. Dr. Kamrava knew she already had multiple babies through IVF. On top of all this, she was a single mother (he knew that too). For some reason, Dr. Kamrava continued to help her have more babies without stopping to consider the ethics of what he was doing.
In September last year, he was kicked out of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine. Not surprisingly, he is actually not board certified in Obstetrics & Gynecology, Surgery, or Internal Medicine. In fact, he’s not board certified in any specialty at all.
The accusation continues to state that Dr. Kamrava also kept inadequate medical records and provided overdoses of medication. If the Medical Board succeeds in its action, he could lose his license to practice medicine in California.
The 13-page document is a matter of public record and can be accessed through the state’s medical board website. The LA Times has also put a copy of it online here.
Barbara
Jan 9th, 2010
Thank God this happened! Enough of this stuff already! Let’s all get back to taking care of the patients who need us and not be side-tracked by this kind of thing! Health care needs a fix but, going to universal health care is not the answer; also rewarding people who just want to be known is not good!
Donald
Jan 11th, 2010
Yeah, I agree, it’s just sad that it happened at all. I had been wondered if they were going to take any action against this doctor.