As an attorney licensed to practice law in the state of California, my first response to the article below is who was the drafting attorney? It is the drafting attorney's responsibility to ensure that the Intended Parents and the Surrogate execute (sign) the contract before any legal clearance is issued. Which leads me to my next question: Who was the IVF physician? The majority of IVF physicians that I work with (I know of only one) will not perform an artificial insemination (IUI) or an in vitro procedure (IVF) without receiving legal clearance from the drafting attorney.
Further, I always counsel my IPs that if they are going to work with a traditional surrogate, they are leaving themselves open to the very real possibility that the surrogate could change her mind and decide to keep the child. In California, the court would side with the surrogate and she would be declared the legal mother (see Johnson v. Calvert).
Also, the surrogate should have had a consult with a licensed psychologist who specializes in assisted reproduction. Perhaps this couple would not be in the predicament that they face today. I am not licensed to practice law in the state of Florida, but it is my understanding that there are some laws that protect couples who enter into a traditional surrogacy agreement.
The contract was not executed, however, the parties should have at least signed consent forms in the doctor's office, which would be evidence of the parties' intent, which controls in California (see Johnson v. Calvert and In Re Marriage of Buzzanca). One can only hope that the doctor involved, if there was one, had the parties execute those documents.
By Grayson Kamm
First Coast News
JACKSONVILLE, FL -- A couple paid a First Coast woman to have their child because they couldn't conceive on their own. Now, they say she won't give them the baby.
It's a birth battle that stretches across Florida. The couple that wants to bring this baby to their home says it's fraud, extortion, but -- most of all -- it's heartbreaking.
In a home near Orlando sits a baby's bedroom, trimmed out with a Tinkerbell theme. It was all lovingly built by the Lamitina family for their new baby girl, Rochelle Amber.
But that baby may never lay its head in this crib.
“My biggest fear is that we may not be able to bring her home. That's what's so hard,” said Gwyn Lamitina, as tears rolled down her cheeks.
The Lamitinas say they had a great experience having a surrogate mom give birth to their two-year-old son TJ, so they were thrilled to try it again. Through a website, they found and hired a surrogate mother from Jacksonville.
But they say this fairy tale turned foul.
"I just kinda hope -- I pray everything will work out all right," said a tearful Tom Lamitina.
Last year, the couple says it signed a "surrogacy contract" with the Jacksonville woman. But they say since they trusted her, they never checked to see if she signed the document.
Then, two months into the pregnancy, the family says their surrogate started asking strange questions. "Personal questions, like how much money I made doing this, doing that. And then how much money I made at the end of the year," Tom remembered. "My first surrogate never asked me how much money I made."
And then, a letter arrived from the surrogate mother's lawyer.
It says this case is now a "child support issue."
"We didn't think anybody would be that low to use a child as a way to scam people out of money. That's pretty -- I mean -- I just didn't think anybody would be that low," Tom said.
We went to the mother's home in Argyle Forest looking for answers. As we did, a woman sped away. In the back of her minivan was what looked like the handle of a baby's car seat.
At the doorstep, a hand reached out from inside the house and stuck a sign on the front door. It said "No comment," and suggested we contact the surrogate mother's attorney.
So we did.
The surrogate's lawyer, Kelly Hampton, declined an on-camera interview, but said over the phone, "Under the laws of the State of Florida, surrogacy is like adoption. The surrogate mom has the option to keep the baby."
We asked, "Is she asking for child support?" The attorney said, "I'm not going to answer that."
Both sides agreed to a DNA test. A document provided to First Coast News by the Lamitinas showed the test was performed by a company on the First Coast and that the test determined a 99.9999 percent probability that Tom Lamitina is the baby's father.
Tom says the surrogate did cash their $1,500 deposit check.
But still, the couple says the surrogate, who provided the egg, never signed that contract. To them, the motive's clear.
"Fraud. Very fraudulent," Gwyn said. "It's almost like extortion... I have the baby, and you have to do what I want."
For now, like their hearts, the baby's room is empty.
"I have been praying a lot and I've got a lot of people praying for me. It's gonna be all right," Tom said.
The Lamitinas' attorney says he plans to go to court soon, filing a suit to give the family full custody of the baby.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Local Doctor Pioneers Ovary Transplants
By Tina Hesman Saey
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Monday, Feb. 12 2007
When Dr. Sherman Silber made history in 2004 by transplanting ovarian tissue from a twin into her identical sister, he said it was a unique case that he wouldn't repeat.
He changed his mind. Six sets of twins are glad he did.
Now, the St. Louis surgeon has become the first person to transplant a whole ovary — last month in twins, and last week, in non-twin sisters.
His colleagues applaud the achievement as a technical tour de force and praise Silber's pioneering spirit.
His work is exciting because it's a first step toward preserving fertility for cancer patients.
Before Silber, no one had shown that a woman's ovary could be replaced successfully. If other doctors can replicate Silber's success, a woman facing chemotherapy and radiation could have her own ovary frozen and returned to her later.
Silber's transplants have worked well because the women involved didn't require immune-suppressing drugs to keep them from rejecting the implanted ovaries.
Most sisters who are not identical twins would require those drugs, and even Silber's supporters question whether the risk of those transplants outweighs the benefits.
Benefits of a whole ovary transplant include restoring fertility and natural hormone production, which helps prevent osteoporosis, heart disease and contributes to a woman's general health. Immune-suppressing drugs can have serious side effects, and there are other ways to treat infertility and replace
hormones.
Silber's latest patient says the transplants are "opening a door" for young women locked in early menopause.
Three years ago, Joy Lagos, 30, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Her older sister Maeapple Chaney, 31, was a perfect tissue match.
Chaney gave her younger sister her bone marrow. The donation worked. Lagos was cured of her cancer, but the treatment shut down her ovaries and plunged the young woman into menopause.
"When you lose the function of your ovaries, you lose more than your fertility," Lagos said.
She developed osteoporosis. Her sex drive waned.
"I didn't feel like a woman," she said.
TV report opens door
Chaney was willing to donate eggs so Lagos and her new husband, Rodrigo Lagos, could have a baby through in vitro fertilization. (The couple got married last September.) But Lagos wanted to feel like a young woman again. Her sister was willing to do anything she could to help. So Joy Lagos began looking for someone who would transplant her sister's ovary into her.
Rodrigo Lagos was flipping through television channels one day. A teaser featuring Silber caught his eye. He recorded the "medical miracle" program featuring Silber's first ovarian tissue transplant.
He couldn't quite believe what he saw, so he searched the Internet. The first hit was Silber's clinic at St. Luke's Hospital. The second was a New England Journal of Medicine article describing the first transplant.
The Lagoses knew then that Silber was exactly the person they were looking for.
So Lagos and Chaney headed from their homes in California to the Infertility Center of St. Louis at St. Luke's, which Silber directs.
Last week, Silber removed one of Chaney's ovaries and gave it to Lagos. Such surgery is incredibly difficult because the artery that feeds blood to the ovary is no bigger around than a thread. Other gynecological surgeons described Silber as a "brilliant" and "extremely skilled" microsurgeon.
"Not everyone is going to play golf like Tiger Woods. It's the same thing," said Dr. Richard Gimpelson, a colleague of Silber's at St. Luke's and the past president of the AAGL, an association of gynecological surgeons.
Even so, reattaching the blood supply to the ovary is the most difficult procedure Silber has ever done, he said.
He chose to do the rigorous operation because he was disappointed in the longevity of the previous transplant technique he used in twins. The original procedure placed strips of ovarian tissue from the fertile twin into her prematurely menopausal sister.
Two of the recipients have had babies. Stephanie Yarber, Silber's first transplant patient, now has two children thanks to the surgery. She had previously tried egg donation without success.
All of the women who have had the transplants are menstruating and ovulating normally, Silber said. But their ovaries are running out of steam faster than he had hoped. The women may get only two to five years of ovarian function using the strips of tissue, he said.
He hopes that a whole ovary with its own blood supply will last decades.
Silber's success is exciting for people who hope to help cancer patients preserve their fertility, said Dr. Pasquale Patrizio, director of the Yale Fertility Center at Yale University.
Patrizio and others are working on ways to freeze whole ovaries. Right now, women who face infertility because of cancer treatments can have strips of their ovarian tissue frozen and replaced once they are in remission. But no one yet has successfully frozen a whole ovary and transplanted it.
Some reservations
Even Silber's supporters are ambivalent about transplants that would require immune-suppressing drugs because of possible health effects for the mothers and their babies.
Silber said he's pretty sure that low doses of the drugs wouldn't harm a developing fetus. About 2,000 women who are on immune-suppressing drugs because of kidney transplants have had healthy babies, he said.
Lagos won't need to take immune-suppressing drugs because the bone marrow transplant and the close match to Chaney makes her able to tolerate her sister's tissue.
Legal, religious, social and ethical issues that don't apply to other organs may surround ovary transplants, Gimpelson said.
"These other organs are donated to save someone's life. The ovaries are to make
someone's life complete. It's a little bit different," he said.
Silber's critics don't give him enough credit, his colleagues say.
"I look at him as a pioneer. He's willing to push the envelope, but he's also really helping these patients. It's not like he's out there looking for some experimental case," said Dr. David Battaglia, director of the IVF laboratory at Oregon Health Sciences University. "We're getting an idea of what is possible for a whole population of patients. We need people like Dr. Silber to show us the way."
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Monday, Feb. 12 2007
When Dr. Sherman Silber made history in 2004 by transplanting ovarian tissue from a twin into her identical sister, he said it was a unique case that he wouldn't repeat.
He changed his mind. Six sets of twins are glad he did.
Now, the St. Louis surgeon has become the first person to transplant a whole ovary — last month in twins, and last week, in non-twin sisters.
His colleagues applaud the achievement as a technical tour de force and praise Silber's pioneering spirit.
His work is exciting because it's a first step toward preserving fertility for cancer patients.
Before Silber, no one had shown that a woman's ovary could be replaced successfully. If other doctors can replicate Silber's success, a woman facing chemotherapy and radiation could have her own ovary frozen and returned to her later.
Silber's transplants have worked well because the women involved didn't require immune-suppressing drugs to keep them from rejecting the implanted ovaries.
Most sisters who are not identical twins would require those drugs, and even Silber's supporters question whether the risk of those transplants outweighs the benefits.
Benefits of a whole ovary transplant include restoring fertility and natural hormone production, which helps prevent osteoporosis, heart disease and contributes to a woman's general health. Immune-suppressing drugs can have serious side effects, and there are other ways to treat infertility and replace
hormones.
Silber's latest patient says the transplants are "opening a door" for young women locked in early menopause.
Three years ago, Joy Lagos, 30, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Her older sister Maeapple Chaney, 31, was a perfect tissue match.
Chaney gave her younger sister her bone marrow. The donation worked. Lagos was cured of her cancer, but the treatment shut down her ovaries and plunged the young woman into menopause.
"When you lose the function of your ovaries, you lose more than your fertility," Lagos said.
She developed osteoporosis. Her sex drive waned.
"I didn't feel like a woman," she said.
TV report opens door
Chaney was willing to donate eggs so Lagos and her new husband, Rodrigo Lagos, could have a baby through in vitro fertilization. (The couple got married last September.) But Lagos wanted to feel like a young woman again. Her sister was willing to do anything she could to help. So Joy Lagos began looking for someone who would transplant her sister's ovary into her.
Rodrigo Lagos was flipping through television channels one day. A teaser featuring Silber caught his eye. He recorded the "medical miracle" program featuring Silber's first ovarian tissue transplant.
He couldn't quite believe what he saw, so he searched the Internet. The first hit was Silber's clinic at St. Luke's Hospital. The second was a New England Journal of Medicine article describing the first transplant.
The Lagoses knew then that Silber was exactly the person they were looking for.
So Lagos and Chaney headed from their homes in California to the Infertility Center of St. Louis at St. Luke's, which Silber directs.
Last week, Silber removed one of Chaney's ovaries and gave it to Lagos. Such surgery is incredibly difficult because the artery that feeds blood to the ovary is no bigger around than a thread. Other gynecological surgeons described Silber as a "brilliant" and "extremely skilled" microsurgeon.
"Not everyone is going to play golf like Tiger Woods. It's the same thing," said Dr. Richard Gimpelson, a colleague of Silber's at St. Luke's and the past president of the AAGL, an association of gynecological surgeons.
Even so, reattaching the blood supply to the ovary is the most difficult procedure Silber has ever done, he said.
He chose to do the rigorous operation because he was disappointed in the longevity of the previous transplant technique he used in twins. The original procedure placed strips of ovarian tissue from the fertile twin into her prematurely menopausal sister.
Two of the recipients have had babies. Stephanie Yarber, Silber's first transplant patient, now has two children thanks to the surgery. She had previously tried egg donation without success.
All of the women who have had the transplants are menstruating and ovulating normally, Silber said. But their ovaries are running out of steam faster than he had hoped. The women may get only two to five years of ovarian function using the strips of tissue, he said.
He hopes that a whole ovary with its own blood supply will last decades.
Silber's success is exciting for people who hope to help cancer patients preserve their fertility, said Dr. Pasquale Patrizio, director of the Yale Fertility Center at Yale University.
Patrizio and others are working on ways to freeze whole ovaries. Right now, women who face infertility because of cancer treatments can have strips of their ovarian tissue frozen and replaced once they are in remission. But no one yet has successfully frozen a whole ovary and transplanted it.
Some reservations
Even Silber's supporters are ambivalent about transplants that would require immune-suppressing drugs because of possible health effects for the mothers and their babies.
Silber said he's pretty sure that low doses of the drugs wouldn't harm a developing fetus. About 2,000 women who are on immune-suppressing drugs because of kidney transplants have had healthy babies, he said.
Lagos won't need to take immune-suppressing drugs because the bone marrow transplant and the close match to Chaney makes her able to tolerate her sister's tissue.
Legal, religious, social and ethical issues that don't apply to other organs may surround ovary transplants, Gimpelson said.
"These other organs are donated to save someone's life. The ovaries are to make
someone's life complete. It's a little bit different," he said.
Silber's critics don't give him enough credit, his colleagues say.
"I look at him as a pioneer. He's willing to push the envelope, but he's also really helping these patients. It's not like he's out there looking for some experimental case," said Dr. David Battaglia, director of the IVF laboratory at Oregon Health Sciences University. "We're getting an idea of what is possible for a whole population of patients. We need people like Dr. Silber to show us the way."
Monday, February 12, 2007
Surrogacy advocates want level playing field
February 10, 2007 12:00am
Stephanie Caballero
The nationwide service which matches egg donors with infertile women is now lobbying for legislative change and says the nation is in urgent need of uniform laws.
Aussie Egg Donors helps donors, recipients and surrogates to navigate
They have no age requirements but have a number of older members and a membership of more than 200.
"My first recipient was 51 when her baby was born," Aussie Egg Donor's co-director Rachel Kunde, 25, said.
"Most clinics have a cut off of 50 at time of treatment. There are pretty much no discriminations on our site. We allow all ages."
NSW is one of the few states where surrogacy is permitted and Aussie Egg Donors are now lobbying for universal laws across the country to make surrogacy legal.
Ms Kunde said varying laws between states had boosted membership in recent years with an increasing number of couples turning to the site for information and support.
NSW,
In
In
Aussie Egg Donors' directors include a women based in Melbourne and another surrogate mother in
Women Who Donate Eggs for Stem Cell Research Face Few Health Risks, Institute of Medicine Report Says
Bioethics & Science |
[Feb 09, 2007]
Stephanie M. Caballero
Stephanie M. Caballero
Women who donate their eggs for stem cell research or in vitro fertilization are not at increased risk of health complications, and most of the risks are a result of the hormones used to stimulate their bodies to release more than one egg, according to a report commissioned by the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine and released Tuesday by the Institute of Medicine, Bloomberg reports. CIRM decided to assess the risk of human egg donation before administering grants under Proposition 71 to researchers who would use donated eggs (Waters, Bloomberg, 2/7). The process of donating eggs involves inserting a thin needle through the vagina into the ovary. Prior to the usual procedure, donors undergo a course of hormone injections to help the process of obtaining five to 15 eggs (Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 10/02/06). These treatments can cause mild pain, slight enlargement of the ovaries and infrequent nausea in the women, Linda Giudice -- chair of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California-San Francisco and co-chair of the IOM panel that produced the report -- said. Studies of women who used hormones to provide eggs that could be used for IVF found that between 2% and 5% of the women developed ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. The report said that although most cases of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome were mild and temporary, in rare cases the condition could lead to serious complications, including kidney failure or death. Fewer than 0.2% of women taking the hormones experience symptoms such as blood clots or reduce blood flow to the kidneys, and about 1.4 of every 100,000 women undergoing fertility treatments experience kidney failure, the report said. Giudice said risk related to infection, surgical complications and anesthesia also are "remarkably low" among women undergoing the procedure. Data did not show that the women are at increased risk of breast or ovarian cancer but there was too little information to assess the risk of uterine cancer, she said. Giudice added that the data are rough estimates of the risks involved in egg donation because women who have donated eggs in the past have not been tracked for long periods of time. Members of the IOM panel suggested that researchers continue tracking women who donate eggs and collect that information in a database (Bloomberg, 2/7).
Australian Couples Breaking Surrogacy Laws
Infertile couples desperate for children are risking their health and breaking the law by using home insemination kits.
Members-only websites link would-be parents with egg donors and surrogates, News Ltd newspapers report.
An increasing number of couples were breaking Australia's strict and complex surrogacy laws, according to the managers of Aussie Egg Donors, an online service and support group.
Co-director Rachel Kunde said differences in the law between states were forcing couple to use DIY insemination methods.
"In some cases people get really desperate ... home insemination happens a lot, I know of at least a dozen surrogates who have done it that way," Ms Kunde told News Limited.
Recent high-profile surrogacy cases have boosted the number of Australian couples willing to break the law, according to an NSW group.
The director of the group, described only as "Cindy", described her network as like "a secret society" and that there were "always ways around laws".
Sandra Dill, executive director of infertility consumer group Access Australia, said DIY surrogacy carried health risks.
There are no surrogacy laws in NSW, Western Australia nor the Northern Territory but in Queensland all surrogacy arrangements are illegal.
In Tasmania it is an offence to make or receive payments while surrogacy agreements have no legal status.
In South Australia, couples are not allowed to enter into a surrogacy contract, while in Victoria it is all but illegal.
© 2007 AAP
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