It would seem that octomom, Nadya Suleman and her fertility doctor, Dr. Michael Kamrava, had a nice little gig going. Suleman popped babies out between 2001 and 2006, and all six thanks to Kamrava. Then of course, came the octuplets last month. Nadya gets her huge family, and Dr. Kamrava gets a boast-worthy track record, with many live births. Win-win situation!
Kamrava and Suleman shared their good news with the local news in 2006 when she was pregnant with her twins, now 2. They were featured in a story with KTLA-TV about Kamrava's embryo implantation procedure that he pioneered, claiming a 70 percent pregnancy rate. However, all that "good news" is being questioned by other doctors and ethicists who believe that Kamrava may have disregarded his professional standards to boost his own stats in the highly competitive and lucrative field.
From the Associated Press:
"A motivation would be improving his rate of live births," said Alex Capron, a professor and bioethicist at the University of Southern California. "If she was already a huge percentage of them, he may have felt 'Implant six, get three. That's three more in my plus column.'
"And for him, that would be a noticeable percentage. That would help to explain his behavior."
Kamrava, 57, has not returned repeated calls from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Suleman, a 33-year-old unemployed single mother, has said Kamrava implanted her with six embryos for each of her six pregnancies — an apparent violation of national guidelines that specify no more than two embryos for a healthy woman under 35. In her last pregnancy, two of the six embryos split to create eight babies.
Reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that between 2000 and 2006, Suleman's children accounted for five out of 24 live births to women under 35 who underwent the same procedure at Kamrava's clinic. (She had six children in all during that period, including a set of twins, which are counted as one live birth in CDC data.) The figures do not include 2005, when Kamrava did not file with the CDC.
During that same period, no more than one in five fertility cycles at Kamrava's clinic in any given year resulted in a live birth for women under 35 using fresh embryos and their own eggs. The national average for U.S. fertility clinics in 2006, the most recent year reported, was about 30 percent.
A high success rate could turn heads in the highly competitive field, where doctors keep close tabs on their standings in clinic-by-clinic statistics. That pressure is magnified in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, where there are many high-volume clinics, said Dr. Hal Danzer, of the Southern California Reproductive Center.
"You look at what everybody else is doing across the country and if everybody is doing better than you do, you start looking at your lab," Danzer said.
The field is also lucrative: In vitro fertilizations can cost up to $15,000 per cycle, and many patients undergo multiple cycles.
Some fertility doctors said they doubt Kamrava, a 25-year veteran in the field, would attempt to plump up his overall statistics with one patient.
"That's a real stretch," said Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, medical director of Fertility Institutes, with locations in Los Angeles, New York and Mexico. "I've known him for a long time, and that's not the impression I get."
Dr. Kamrava is now under investigation by the California Medical Board and American Society for Reproductive Medicine, which recommends women under 35 are implanted with no more than two embryos.
Do you think the doctor was as reckless as Nadya?
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