$1m pay-out for IVF embryo mix-up

Samples were mixed up

A California woman has been awarded $1m damages after she was implanted with the wrong embryos during IVF.

The embryos Susan Buchweitz received at a San Francisco clinic were intended for a married couple who underwent IVF on the same day.

Doctors hid the mistake until Ms Buchweitz's son was 10-months old.

The couple is seeking custody of the boy, who is now three years old. He was created using the husband's sperm and a different egg donor.

The dilemma he had was that if he told somebody, he had to tell everybody, and somebody would be harmed as a result of it. Robert Slattery

It is alleged that fertility doctors Steven Katz and Imam El-Danasouri realised their mistake minutes after treating Ms Buchweitz in June 2000.

According to court papers, they concluded it would be better to let nature take its course rather than disclose the error, possibly causing the patient to end the pregnancy.

Dr Katz's attorney, Robert Slattery, said on Tuesday that his client believed that at age 47 and after two years of trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant, Ms Buchweitz faced long odds with her IVF procedure.

He worried that if he told her about the switched embryos, he would have to tell the married couple, too, thereby setting the scenario for a battle over custody.

Mr Slattery said: "The dilemma he had was that if he told somebody, he had to tell everybody, and somebody would be harmed as a result of it."

Anonymous complaint

IVF creates moral and practical dilemmas to which the only response has to be to ban the procedure altogether. Professor Jack Scarisbrick

Ms Buchweitz learned about the switched embryos in December 2001 after the Medical Board of California, acting on an anonymous complaint from a former worker at Dr Katz's clinic, contacted her and said there had been a mistake with her IVF procedure.

After she contacted the clinic Dr Katz and Dr El-Danasouri went to her home and revealed what had happened.

They also notified the couple, who are unnamed in court papers and filed their own fraud-and-negligence case against the two doctors.

A family court judge has granted Buchweitz temporary custody of the boy and the husband, as the biological father, twice-weekly custody.

How care will be divided in future will be decided in October.

Ms Buchweitz said: "It's so ironic the court would ask people who don't know each other to co-parent.

"There is no psychology book that says how to do this."

Dr Katz is being investigated by the Medical Board of California.

Professor Jack Scarisbrick, of the UK prolife charity Life, said the case was another example of "the mess that IVF creates".

"Nobody has considered the welfare of the child in this case," he said.

"IVF creates moral and practical dilemmas to which the only response has to be to ban the procedure altogether."