Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: This series features conversations about pregnancy, complications and loss. Please
Speaker 2: take care while listening. It's October of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: I want you to meet Kendall. She works the front
Speaker 2: desk at one of kind Body's Chicago clinics. Her title
Speaker 2: is patient coordinator.
Speaker 3: And that week I was on mail duty. So that
Speaker 3: means that you have to go to open up all
Speaker 3: the mail. You have to distribute it where it goes
Speaker 3: for the doctors. And so I opened it and we
Speaker 3: do peruse them like we do have to read them
Speaker 3: because they're like if we don't read them, then we
Speaker 3: don't know how to trickle it up or what to
Speaker 3: do with it.
Speaker 2: This part of the job was usually pretty mundane, but
Speaker 2: on this day, a letter addressed to doctor Angie Beltzos,
Speaker 2: Kind Body's chief medical officer stopped Kendall cold. Kendall isn't
Speaker 2: her real name. Like others in this series, she asked
Speaker 2: us to give her a pseudonym when speaking about the company.
Speaker 3: So I read this in the office and my jaw
Speaker 3: hit the floor because I was like, what do you mean.
Speaker 4: What do you actually mean? We're doing this?
Speaker 5: Kendall couldn't hide her disbelief. Her coworker immediately.
Speaker 3: Noticed and she was like, what are you reading? And
Speaker 3: I was like, dude, I literally looked at her out.
Speaker 3: I don't know what I'm reading because I was so
Speaker 3: taken aback by this letter, and so I gave it
Speaker 3: to her and she was like Jesus Christ, and I go,
Speaker 3: what am I supposed to do with this? What am
Speaker 3: I supposed to do with this?
Speaker 2: The letter was sent by a woman who said she'd
Speaker 2: been an egg donor and she was writing to Warren
Speaker 2: doctor Beltzos about the man she donated her eggs too,
Speaker 2: a billionaire named Greg Lindberg. The woman had donated her
Speaker 2: eggs to Greg back in twenty eighteen, and she had
Speaker 2: the procedure done at a Chicago clinic which was then
Speaker 2: run by Bios, a fertility chain that Angie Beltzos found
Speaker 2: it before it was acquired by kind Body. I asked
Speaker 2: Kendall to read the letter.
Speaker 3: Hello, doctor Angeline Belzo's this masters pertains to your patient Greg.
Speaker 3: I am one of his egg donors that went through
Speaker 3: Bios in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: The woman then references a phone call she says she
Speaker 2: made to doctor Beltzo's back in twenty twenty, I called you.
Speaker 3: To disclose the truth regarding my egg donation experience at BIOS.
Speaker 3: I informed you that I had undergone the egg donation
Speaker 3: under duress and had been deceived by mister Lindbergh, who
Speaker 3: had failed to fulfill the promised compensation for the egg donation.
Speaker 2: The woman calls the entire egg donation experience quote completely
Speaker 2: unethical and traumatizing, and she references other women who she
Speaker 2: says were also pressured to do things they were uncomfortable with.
Speaker 5: The letter goes on to say.
Speaker 2: That Limberg continued to have more children from other donors
Speaker 2: and surrogates after the woman reached out to doctor Beltzoe's
Speaker 2: and that during some of that time, Lindberg was in
Speaker 2: prison for bribing an insurance commissioner.
Speaker 3: Mister Lindbergh currently has at least five or more egg
Speaker 3: donors involved in different clinics across the USA. The number
Speaker 3: is increasing. In twenty twenty two, mister Lindberg managed to
Speaker 3: re create twins through surrogates while incarcerated in a federal prison,
Speaker 3: indicating that his family is continually expanding through the helps
Speaker 3: of these fertility clinics.
Speaker 2: Over the last six years, Lindberg has had nine children
Speaker 2: with the help of donors and surrogates. Documents I've reviewed
Speaker 2: show that three of Lindberg's babies were born while he
Speaker 2: was in prison, and two of them with the help
Speaker 2: of BIOS and later Kind Body. I've also seen surrogate
Speaker 2: contracts that Limberg electronically sign from behind bars, which listed
Speaker 2: doctor Baltzos as the designated medical provider and Lindbergh as
Speaker 2: the sole intended parent. In February of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: Kind Body bought Bios and the clinic continued to play
Speaker 2: a crucial role in Lindberg's baby project. Out of the
Speaker 2: six additional children Lindberg went on to have since that time,
Speaker 2: three of them were born through surrogates treated at Kind Body.
Speaker 2: The letter continues with the woman saying she and other
Speaker 2: egg donors are concerned that Lindberg is lying to them
Speaker 2: about what is happening with their eggs.
Speaker 5: The woman says he.
Speaker 2: Originally promised to tell her when he used her embryos
Speaker 2: and whether any children were created, but she says she
Speaker 2: doesn't trust him to be honest about that. She ends
Speaker 2: it by writing.
Speaker 3: I sincerely hope that you took my phone call in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty seriously and kept ethics in mind, and that
Speaker 3: you have not assisted mister Lindberg in his efforts to
Speaker 3: create additional children.
Speaker 5: Sincerely, the patient.
Speaker 2: So the letter addressed to kind Body painted a disturbing
Speaker 2: picture of what it suggested the company was taking part in.
Speaker 2: Kind Body said that it didn't acquire bios until years
Speaker 2: after the first stages of Lindberg's baby project. It declined
Speaker 2: to comment further for this podcast. Doctor Baltzos didn't respond
Speaker 2: to interview requests from Bloomberg and iHeart podcasts. You're listening
Speaker 2: to IVF disrupted the kind Body story. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Jackie Devalos.
Speaker 5: You've heard how.
Speaker 2: Kind Body is a fertility chain that operates like a startup.
Speaker 2: Much of its funding came from venture capital and private
Speaker 2: equity firms, and it's push to expand quickly, to open
Speaker 2: more clinics, to bring in more patients, and to make
Speaker 2: more profits. Its founder, Gina Bartesi, compared the company to
Speaker 2: a rocket ship to the moon, and she once suggested
Speaker 2: to a group of employees that they would make so
Speaker 2: much money they'd each have their own private jets. But
Speaker 2: the move fast and break things mentality is a dangerous
Speaker 2: game when you're talking about IVF and women's bodies, their embryos,
Speaker 2: and their hopes of creating a family are all on
Speaker 2: the line. In the previous episode, we heard from women
Speaker 2: who felt kind Body push them into procedures they didn't need.
Speaker 2: Now we'll hear about kind Body burning through cash and
Speaker 2: taking on patients that other clinics were hesitant to treat.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. Let's get back to Kendall. She's
Speaker 2: the kind Body employee who was working the front desk
Speaker 2: in a Chicago clinic. She was holding this letter that
Speaker 2: was sounding the alarm on a billionaire, Greg Lindbergh and
Speaker 2: what he called, quote the baby Project. She had never
Speaker 2: met this woman who wrote the letter and had never
Speaker 2: seen Lindberg in person, but Kendall does remember when lind
Speaker 2: Berg's name first came on her radar.
Speaker 3: I remember I was trying to collect payment for one
Speaker 3: of the services and I couldn't collect the payment, and
Speaker 3: they're like, oh, do this, this, this, this, and this,
Speaker 3: and I was like, okay, well I did that. So
Speaker 3: I had to call my manager and then my manager
Speaker 3: was like, oh ha ha, we do it this way
Speaker 3: because he's in prison.
Speaker 5: And I was like, Dad is so weird, Kendall said.
Speaker 5: Some things were off.
Speaker 2: Lind Berg's assistant coordinated appointments for egg donors and surrogates.
Speaker 5: This was widely known at the clinic.
Speaker 2: She remembered one day when one of linn Berg's surrogates
Speaker 2: checked in for an appointment.
Speaker 3: I would do my normal Greek for hi, welcome in.
Speaker 3: Can I have your first and last? And I just
Speaker 3: remember she wouldn't make eye contact with me. She kept
Speaker 3: saying everything, but she was looking down. She wasn't trying
Speaker 3: to not connect, but she wasn't trying to involve herself.
Speaker 3: And the assistant was doing a lot of the talking too.
Speaker 5: This wasn't how it usually worked.
Speaker 3: Normally, the intended parents would come with the carrier and
Speaker 3: if the partner is available, they come. But it was
Speaker 3: just all very strange, just strange behavior, strange how we
Speaker 3: danced around the looke holes. It was almost like everything
Speaker 3: was catered around him.
Speaker 2: Lindberg built his fortune first through his private equity firm
Speaker 2: ELI Global, which bought businesses in a wide range of
Speaker 2: industries medical coders, travel firms, a seller of sports collectibles.
Speaker 2: But it was buying up insurance companies that made Lindberg
Speaker 2: a billionaire. In twenty twenty, a consulting firm pegged his
Speaker 2: net worth at his highs, about one point five billion dollars.
Speaker 2: Over the past several years, he's been convicted in federal
Speaker 2: court twice for bribery, and he pleaded guilty in a
Speaker 2: third case in November of twenty twenty four for money
Speaker 2: laundering and fraud. These charges stem from a two billion
Speaker 2: dollar scheme to funnel money from his insurance companies to
Speaker 2: use for his personal benefit. Right now, he's facing as
Speaker 2: much as thirty years in prison. By contrast, Lindbergh's baby
Speaker 2: project didn't seem to break any laws. He made a
Speaker 2: plan to have as many as fifty children through a
Speaker 2: web of egg donors and surrogates.
Speaker 5: I pieced this.
Speaker 2: Together by reviewing thousands of pages of company documents, legal,
Speaker 2: medical and financial records. I also conducted dozens of interviews
Speaker 2: with Lindberg's former employees, clinic workers, ex girlfriends, egg donors,
Speaker 2: and surrogates. Lindberg sent egg donors to clinics in California, Illinois, Nevada,
Speaker 2: and Barbados, but the majority of his owns and surrogates
Speaker 2: at least eleven received treatment at the clinic in Chicago
Speaker 2: that was run by Bios, and then kind Body, a
Speaker 2: clinic in Los Angeles not related to kind Body, also
Speaker 2: did a lot of fertility procedures on Lindberg's behalf. I
Speaker 2: wrote about this baby project in a story with my
Speaker 2: colleague Sophia Alexander that was published last year in Bloomberg
Speaker 2: Business Week. Lindberg participated in interviews for the article, but
Speaker 2: in the months leading up to publication, he cut off
Speaker 2: contact and filed a lawsuit against me and Sophie in
Speaker 2: state court in Florida, alleging defamation, slander, and interference in
Speaker 2: his business relationships. After the article actually ran, he sued
Speaker 2: us again, this time in Florida Federal court, making more
Speaker 2: or less the same allegations. In May, he asked the
Speaker 2: state court to dismiss that case, saying it was largely
Speaker 2: duplicative of the federal case, and then in August, the
Speaker 2: federal court dismissed all of his claims against Bloomberg and
Speaker 2: me and Sofia. I should also know I reached out
Speaker 2: to Lindbergh again while preparing the series and told him
Speaker 2: what I was planning to report about him, and he
Speaker 2: didn't respond back at kind body. Kendall was stunned by
Speaker 2: the egg donor's letter, so she took this problem to
Speaker 2: her superiors.
Speaker 3: I'm going to bring it to my manager and her
Speaker 3: higher up her manager, and so I brought it up
Speaker 3: to them. They had me scan it over to them,
Speaker 3: and it was basically like, okay, well we'll handle this now.
Speaker 5: Were you expecting what kind of reaction? Were you expecting
Speaker 5: shock and awe?
Speaker 3: Definitely shock and all, but there was no shock and
Speaker 3: there was no awe, Like it was just like another
Speaker 3: day run of the mill for them. They were just like,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, totally. And I was like, this is huge,
Speaker 3: and I go, should I present this letter to doctor
Speaker 3: Beltzo's And I remember my manager specifically telling me do
Speaker 3: not give it to doctor Beltzos, and so I was like,
Speaker 3: what can be done.
Speaker 2: I spoke to the woman who sent the letter to
Speaker 2: doctor Beltzos. She was one of Lindbergh's egg donors. She
Speaker 2: didn't want to be recorded for this podcast for fear
Speaker 2: of retribution, but she told me that when she spoke
Speaker 2: with doctor Beltzos in twenty twenty, the doctor suggested she
Speaker 2: should watch YouTube meditation videos and relax. I reached out
Speaker 2: to doctor Beltzo's last year before my investigation was published,
Speaker 2: and again for this podcast. She has not responded to
Speaker 2: any requests for comment. The woman also told me that
Speaker 2: the letter she sent in October of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: the one Kendall saw, was also sent to other leaders
Speaker 2: at kind Body, including Gena Bartesi.
Speaker 5: No one replied to her.
Speaker 2: Gina Bartesi declined to comment for this series. I wanted
Speaker 2: to know more about how Lindbergh's baby project was seen
Speaker 2: by other fertility clinics and doctors. In the course of
Speaker 2: my reporting, I learned that Lindberg had actually been denied
Speaker 2: treatment at another fertility clinic. It happened when he first
Speaker 2: embarked on this quest in twenty eighteen, he went to
Speaker 2: Duke Fertility Center. Lindberg was upfront about what he was doing.
Speaker 5: He wanted to.
Speaker 2: Have four surrogates pregnant. At the same time, he told
Speaker 2: the doctor at Duke that he had already arranged for
Speaker 2: a woman to be paid one point five million dollars
Speaker 2: to donate her eggs, and one of his assistants would
Speaker 2: carry the first baby. According to three people who were
Speaker 2: involved in the baby project at this time, the doctor.
Speaker 5: Refused to treat him.
Speaker 2: They said she was troubled by what she heard, but
Speaker 2: I wanted to know why she wouldn't talk to me,
Speaker 2: so I interviewed more than two dozen doctors, embriologists, and psychologists.
Speaker 2: I wanted to understand what a fertility clinic is supposed
Speaker 2: to do when something like this comes up. There are
Speaker 2: some enforceable guardrails on who can donate eggs. The FDA
Speaker 2: requires fertility clinics to collect a donor's medical history and
Speaker 2: test for infectious diseases. The rest is left up to
Speaker 2: the American Society for Reproductive Medicine or ASRM. It's an
Speaker 2: industry group for fertility clinics. They craft guidelines on what
Speaker 2: to do or not to do for themselves, so essentially
Speaker 2: they're self policing, and these are just guidelines, suggestions, really
Speaker 2: not hard and fast rules. For example, they strongly recommend
Speaker 2: that the egg donor undergoes an extensive psychological evaluation, which
Speaker 2: probes into everything from work history, financial stability, and a
Speaker 2: history of mental illness. Experts say a proper evaluation can
Speaker 2: take anywhere from an hour to several sessions, and it
Speaker 2: should take longer if the donor knows who she's donating
Speaker 2: to One of the goals is to see if she's
Speaker 2: being pressured into donating. Doctor julianne's Wifle is a psychologist
Speaker 2: specializing in reproductive health at the University of Wisconsin. I
Speaker 2: met her last year at the fertility industry's biggest annuel gathering.
Speaker 2: Doctor's Swifele served on the ethics committee at ASRM for
Speaker 2: six years, so she's seen her fair share of complicated cases.
Speaker 2: She said that when she counsels her patients, she's trying
Speaker 2: to gauge whether the woman donating her eggs is making
Speaker 2: a well informed decision.
Speaker 6: One of the big things you're also trying to make
Speaker 6: sure isn't going on is a level of coercion, either
Speaker 6: overt or assumed. But that doesn't mean you really want
Speaker 6: to do it.
Speaker 7: But are you?
Speaker 6: Are you in a position where you can say no?
Speaker 6: If somebody can't say no, it doesn't really feel like
Speaker 6: a free choice any longer.
Speaker 2: There isn't a cap on how much egg donors can
Speaker 2: be paid for their eggs. Most donors are paid somewhere
Speaker 2: between eight and twenty five thousand dollars. Lindbergh was paying
Speaker 2: his donors as much as one point five million dollars.
Speaker 2: Doctors I spoke to said this would be a major
Speaker 2: red flag because for some donors that amount of money
Speaker 2: is kind of impossible to pass up. Another thing that
Speaker 2: Lindbergh wanted to do was to have multiple women pregnant
Speaker 2: at the same time. Doctor's wifele said this should have
Speaker 2: also raised concerns. She stressed that a doctor's responsibility is
Speaker 2: to all of the patients, the donor and the surrogate
Speaker 2: and the intended parent, not just the one paying the
Speaker 2: clinic fees. A surrogate's needs need to be carefully considered too,
Speaker 2: because the process of carrying someone else's child isn't just
Speaker 2: physically taxing. It can also be emotionally complicated. If you
Speaker 2: have multiple donors and multiple surrogates at the same time,
Speaker 2: there might be a tendency to treat them like things.
Speaker 6: We have to treat the carrier as a human who
Speaker 6: could be harmed, and I don't want carriers to be harmed.
Speaker 6: And intended parents, I'm really trying to get a sense
Speaker 6: of are they going to respect this person, Do they
Speaker 6: see them as a whole human They're not just I'd
Speaker 6: never use the word oven. Oven is a piece of
Speaker 6: equipment you know this is a person.
Speaker 2: There was another problem with Lindbergh's baby project. His first
Speaker 2: surrogate was his assistant. She had worked for him at
Speaker 2: his private equity firm.
Speaker 6: You can't have an employee of yours beer carrier, because
Speaker 6: that is coercion like, because she will feel she can't
Speaker 6: say no right because now she's at risk of losing
Speaker 6: her job.
Speaker 2: Lindbergh was able to do what he did because without regulation,
Speaker 2: America's fertility industry is a marketplace for almost anything is
Speaker 2: possible if you have enough money.
Speaker 7: When it comes to third party reproduction, we're in a
Speaker 7: really weird, sticky place.
Speaker 2: That's doctor Brian Levine. He's a founding doctor at CCRM
Speaker 2: New York. It's part of a big chain of fertility
Speaker 2: clinics that is owned by private equity.
Speaker 7: And the reason is weird and sticky. He has this
Speaker 7: unregulated and unchecked. There is no national registry in America
Speaker 7: to know how many times someone has donated X, nor
Speaker 7: how many times someone has donated a sperm.
Speaker 2: And yet, even to doctor Levine, Greg Lindberg stood out.
Speaker 7: I've never had a patient say to me, I want
Speaker 7: to get three D surrogates pregnant in one year, never
Speaker 7: seen it, never had it happen. I've heard of it,
Speaker 7: but I've never actually had that clinical experience.
Speaker 2: What Lindbergh wanted went beyond anything doctor Levine had encountered
Speaker 2: in his career. Multiple donors at the same clinic, surrogates
Speaker 2: who were employees, payments that dwarfed normal compensation. But the
Speaker 2: system has no mechanism to stop it.
Speaker 7: There's no laws. It's an unregulated space. There's laws by
Speaker 7: the FDA, the Fund and Drug Administration, there's laws of
Speaker 7: reporting by the CDC, the Center for Disease Control, But
Speaker 7: when it comes to who has the opportunity to work
Speaker 7: with a surrogate, it's very clear that is up the
Speaker 7: discretion of the treating physician.
Speaker 2: Lindbergh's efforts might sound extreme, but he's taking part in
Speaker 2: a small but high profile trend wealthy men having a
Speaker 2: large number of children to fulfill their reproductive ambitions. Elon Musk,
Speaker 2: who has fathered at least fourteen children, has repeatedly warned
Speaker 2: about population collapse and urged more people to have more babies,
Speaker 2: calling it quote the biggest danger civilization faces. Then there's Paveldurov,
Speaker 2: the founder of Telegram, who said in a June interview
Speaker 2: that he has fathered over a hundred children by donating sperm.
Speaker 2: As long as the IVF industry remains largely unregulated, there's
Speaker 2: little to stop the next billionaire with the baby project
Speaker 2: from finding a willing clinic to help. Doctor Levine says
Speaker 2: Greg Linberg's baby project at kind Body pointed to institutional failure.
Speaker 7: A lot of things just kind of went through holes,
Speaker 7: and the holes just lined up in this one scenario
Speaker 7: where they person went from checkbook to baby. And I
Speaker 7: will argue that leadership starts at the top, and so
Speaker 7: that was pervasive in this clinic where it happened with
Speaker 7: multiple individuals, even though they were all assigned to one
Speaker 7: intended parent. I would argue that there was a dangerous
Speaker 7: culture that occurred within that clinic. And I would worry
Speaker 7: about the other outcomes that have happened there as well
Speaker 7: that aren't being reported to you.
Speaker 2: For the woman who tried to sound the alarm with
Speaker 2: her letter, going through the courts wasn't going to yield
Speaker 2: the accountability she wanted. She felt the clinic bore some
Speaker 2: responsibility because after all, she was.
Speaker 5: A patient too.
Speaker 2: She'd warned doctor Beltsos multiple times, there were no consequences
Speaker 2: for Limberg. Kendall, the kind Body employee who opened the letter,
Speaker 2: was frustrated that the clinic wasn't doing anything. She told
Speaker 2: her superiors, she told her colleagues.
Speaker 3: And so I was like, what can be done? And
Speaker 3: I was talking to my other coworker who was well
Speaker 3: aware of this situation, and she goes, we just don't
Speaker 3: do anything about it. We just don't just leave it.
Speaker 3: And I was like, no, that's not right. What struck
Speaker 3: me was like reading that letter. I was like, this
Speaker 3: woman is in pain, and I can't imagine her experience
Speaker 3: and what she had to go through.
Speaker 2: According to Kendall, Lindbergh wasn't the only patient that kind
Speaker 2: Body was accepting that other clinics were hesitant to treat,
Speaker 2: like women in their fifties or patients who were considered
Speaker 2: too overweight to be eligible for IVF.
Speaker 3: Working at kind Body, we were like the dumpster fire.
Speaker 3: That was our model, Like you would come to us
Speaker 3: if everyone else denied you, because we would put you through.
Speaker 2: Kind Body framed this as a point of pride by
Speaker 2: They're telling they were expanding access to anyone who wanted
Speaker 2: to have a baby, But to Kendall, after everything she
Speaker 2: had seen. This wasn't out of compassion, It was at greed.
Speaker 3: I just saw over and over and over again, them
Speaker 3: pushing through these geriatric patients that were not getting the results,
Speaker 3: and then every single time they just changed protocol to say, oh,
Speaker 3: next time it will be it. But then you have
Speaker 3: some patients that are going through twenty one rounds being older,
Speaker 3: and they're just told oh, next time, Oh, next time,
Speaker 3: But no one's having the real conversation and being transparent
Speaker 3: with these patients. There was women in their fifties and
Speaker 3: men in their seventies.
Speaker 2: At this stage, the chances of getting pregnant are lower,
Speaker 2: so these older patients often ended up spending more money
Speaker 2: on IVF than people in their thirties and forties.
Speaker 3: There was so much that fell in between the cracks,
Speaker 3: because again it was kind of like get them in, retrieve, transplant,
Speaker 3: get them out, like that was that was it. And
Speaker 3: I do think a lot of it got lost in
Speaker 3: lost in between, you know, just because so many people
Speaker 3: are coming in, but we're not looking at I don't know,
Speaker 3: we're not keeping the morality compass in mind. Like I
Speaker 3: do think a lot of times morals were thrown out,
Speaker 3: and just the price tag was what was making the
Speaker 3: doctors keep going. I do have people in my life
Speaker 3: that were looking into fertility.
Speaker 5: I said, do not go to kind Body.
Speaker 2: So this is the thorny situation that the IVF industry
Speaker 2: finds itself in. In this series, you've heard from many
Speaker 2: patients who feel they've been harmed and disillusioned employees who
Speaker 2: think that kind Body and the larger industry should do better.
Speaker 2: They're begging for improvements, but does the industry have the
Speaker 2: will to change. By twenty twenty four, kind Body was
Speaker 2: in a full financial crisis. They'd burn through investor money
Speaker 2: and they'd failed to secure another funding round. The company
Speaker 2: that was once valued at one point eight billion dollars
Speaker 2: was running on fumes. Gina Bartesi hadn't been CEO for
Speaker 2: two years. In June of twenty twenty four, she took
Speaker 2: over the job again. The company built it as a
Speaker 2: move to steer kind Body during a time of unprecedented growth,
Speaker 2: but that same summer, kind Body abruptly started closing clinics.
Speaker 2: One of the first to close was in Crest Hill, Illinois,
Speaker 2: not far from where Kendall worked in Chicago.
Speaker 3: So they told us Crest Hill was closing, and I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, okay, so we're gonna like have transferred time,
Speaker 3: like it's closing, but there's They were saying that they
Speaker 3: were going to phase things out, and the next day
Speaker 3: I came in and it was like, oh, no, Crest
Speaker 3: Hills closed, and I was like, we.
Speaker 8: What do you mean?
Speaker 3: Patients were losing their minds and we were just told, oh,
Speaker 3: handel it as best you can.
Speaker 2: Patients discovered their clinics had shuttered through phone calls with
Speaker 2: frantic receptionists. Some were right in the middle of treatment,
Speaker 2: they had retrievals scheduled, and their bodies were flooded with
Speaker 2: thousands of dollars worth of fertility drugs. Others had embryo
Speaker 2: transfers on the calendar for just the following week.
Speaker 3: Our phones were ringing like every minute of every single
Speaker 3: day because no one knew what was going on, and
Speaker 3: we were told like an exert of what to say,
Speaker 3: but like these patients were still flying blind. They didn't
Speaker 3: know what was happening, and kind body was not giving
Speaker 3: them that information. And the information that they were giving
Speaker 3: them was like half asked, Oh, don't worry, you'll still
Speaker 3: get the best.
Speaker 2: Care, and I was like, girl, this is not the
Speaker 2: best care right now.
Speaker 3: And because they did that, we we had to absorb
Speaker 3: so many patients in the Chicago offices.
Speaker 2: Then the Detroit clinic closed.
Speaker 3: I remember specifically there was a woman that was supposed
Speaker 3: to get a transfer done like the next week that
Speaker 3: Detroit had closed, and this woman called me sobbing. She
Speaker 3: was like, I have to do these things you're telling me,
Speaker 3: I have to go to another clinic.
Speaker 2: After all of this, Kendall hit her breaking point, and.
Speaker 3: So I was like, I'm like officially done with this
Speaker 3: company because the only thing you all are interested in
Speaker 3: is money.
Speaker 2: According to a document I saw and people with knowledge
Speaker 2: of the matter, the company was scrambling for ten million
Speaker 2: dollars in bridge financing just to keep the lights on.
Speaker 2: The rocket ship was sputtering. In December twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: Bloomberg BusinessWeek published My investigation into Lindbergh's baby project. A
Speaker 2: Kind Body spokeswoman said in a statement at the time
Speaker 2: that Bloomberg's reporting was quote categorically false. Kind Body said
Speaker 2: it had hired an outside law firm to conduct an
Speaker 2: independent review of the allegations. A week later, Kind Body
Speaker 2: announced that Gina Bartesy was stepping down from her second
Speaker 2: turn as CEO. When I first heard about the news,
Speaker 2: I texted Gina and she told me quote it had
Speaker 2: been planned for months. Former execusatives and people familiar with
Speaker 2: discussions that kind Body's board were having at this time
Speaker 2: told me Gina had actually been asked to step down.
Speaker 2: Two months after that, in February of twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: doctor Angie Beltzos, who treated Lindbergh, stepped down from her
Speaker 2: role as chief physician. When I asked Gina and kind
Speaker 2: Body about my reporting, representatives pointed out she was instrumental
Speaker 2: in building a company that has expanded access to reproductive
Speaker 2: health care. Kind Bodies said partnerships with Walmart, for example,
Speaker 2: have expanded access in rural fertility deserts, and that nearly
Speaker 2: ten thousand families exist or have grown during Gina's tenure
Speaker 2: at kind Body alone. I reached out to former kind
Speaker 2: Body employees when I first heard that Gina was stepping down.
Speaker 2: Here's Tracy Sosa, an early employee who worked at their
Speaker 2: Princeton clinic.
Speaker 9: At the end of the day, she has a brilliant mind,
Speaker 9: she's a great businesswoman. All those things I won't take
Speaker 9: that away from her, and she was always very lovely
Speaker 9: to me.
Speaker 2: So any are you surprised she resigned?
Speaker 9: Yeah, we're staying down again, which I'm sure it probably
Speaker 9: killed her to do, I would think, because this is
Speaker 9: like your baby, right, she started it from nothing and
Speaker 9: built it into what it was.
Speaker 2: Dozens of people I talked to who worked at kind
Speaker 2: Body said that at some point the company lost its way,
Speaker 2: that it's strayed from its original mission. Tracy was dismayed
Speaker 2: by what my reporting on Lindbergh and his baby project
Speaker 2: had revealed.
Speaker 1: When you posted that story about the millionaire, I sent
Speaker 1: it to my family.
Speaker 9: I was like, literally like has no bottom, Like I'm
Speaker 9: seething when I I can't believe it?
Speaker 10: Do you?
Speaker 9: How do you go that far and then continue to
Speaker 9: go and double down?
Speaker 7: Now? Where are all those kids?
Speaker 9: Honestly, where are all those babies?
Speaker 5: And who has them?
Speaker 1: Are their mothers?
Speaker 6: Okay?
Speaker 1: But as long as the clinic's taking money though, you
Speaker 1: see what I'm saying, Like, that's crazy, it's scary.
Speaker 2: I asked kind Body about its internal review of the
Speaker 2: allegations related to Greg Lindberg. The company declined to say
Speaker 2: what it found. Kind Body continues to operate, though in
Speaker 2: a diminished form. In the past year, it's closed six clinics,
Speaker 2: including in Portland, Columbus, and Vancouver. The company opened one
Speaker 2: new clinic in Charlotte, North Carolina, after years of trying
Speaker 2: to get it off the ground, but plans in other cities,
Speaker 2: including Miami and Philadelphia, haven't yielded anything. Several of its
Speaker 2: top doctors and lab directors have resigned or been laid off.
Speaker 2: The chief financial officer, who had been serving as co
Speaker 2: CEO after Gina's departure, left the company in the spring,
Speaker 2: along with the chief technology officer. For the employees who
Speaker 2: believed in kind Body's original mission, watching its decline has
Speaker 2: been difficult, they joined a company that promised to transform
Speaker 2: women's healthcare, to treat patients holistically, to make fertility care
Speaker 2: feel less clinical and more human. They feel disillusioned.
Speaker 9: Don't get me into there on this cheerleading Pom pom
Speaker 9: women empowerment.
Speaker 5: It's going to be a great esthetic.
Speaker 9: It's going to have the holistic aspect. You didn't give
Speaker 9: me anything. You took away my career, you tarnished my name,
Speaker 9: or whatever you did to never get me hired again.
Speaker 2: Dozens of former employees told me kind Body had a
Speaker 2: culture of fear and intimidation that made it difficult to
Speaker 2: speak out.
Speaker 5: I found out about.
Speaker 2: Some instances where employees who raised concerns about how the
Speaker 2: business was being run or abruptly sued when they quit
Speaker 2: in protest. Throughout my reporting, kind Body sent legal letters
Speaker 2: to people that suspected of speaking with me. They threatened
Speaker 2: to sue if they spoke out about the company. As
Speaker 2: kind body struggles in the industry became more widely known,
Speaker 2: former employe like Tracy told me they felt like their
Speaker 2: careers were tainted by having kind Body on the resume.
Speaker 1: I told you in that first the first time we spoke.
Speaker 1: I knew once I spoke, I was done and it
Speaker 1: was really hard to get a job and to find
Speaker 1: some stability. So if I'm going from not having money
Speaker 1: to buy food for my kids and for myself and
Speaker 1: to get to where I am now, I could still
Speaker 1: sleep at night. I'm really sad that it came to
Speaker 1: all that, because they really had some talented, really great
Speaker 1: people working for them, and they really had a great
Speaker 1: idea to help women because it wasn't just treating the
Speaker 1: patient medically. They had the nutrition, the holistic like I said,
Speaker 1: so they really hit something there.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty five, kind Body appointed a new CEO,
Speaker 2: David Stern. He was previously the CEO of Boston IVF,
Speaker 2: a fertility network that is widely respected by people in
Speaker 2: the industry, and before that he worked at various healthcare
Speaker 2: companies in operational or management roles. He's not a doctor,
Speaker 2: he's a business guy. Employees I spoke to, past and
Speaker 2: current have high hopes that David will turn the company around.
Speaker 2: We wanted to hear about his plans for kind Body
Speaker 2: and invited him for an interview, but he declined.
Speaker 5: We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: David Stern's appointment signals that kind Body is trying to
Speaker 2: turn things around, But the problems I've uncovered at this
Speaker 2: company are symptoms of something much bigger. Over the past
Speaker 2: two and a half years of reporting, I kept coming
Speaker 2: back to the same question, how did we get here?
Speaker 2: How did an industry that creates life, that fulfills people's
Speaker 2: deepest dreams of having children become a place where embryos
Speaker 2: get mislabeled, where billionaires can essentially buy babies, and where
Speaker 2: patients feel like they're being upsold rather than cared for.
Speaker 2: The answer lies in a fundamental tension at the heart
Speaker 2: of American fertility care. On the one side, you have
Speaker 2: the miracle of modern medicine, the ability to help people
Speaker 2: have children who otherwise couldn't. On the other side, you
Speaker 2: have an industry that operates with virtually no oversight for
Speaker 2: market forces reign supreme, where patients often have no way
Speaker 2: to distinguish between good clinics and bad ones. This lack
Speaker 2: of transparency affects everyone who walks through a fertility clinics doors.
Speaker 2: Patients are essentially flying blind. I spoke to Adam Wolf
Speaker 2: about this lack of transparency. He's a lawyer who specializes
Speaker 2: in fertility litigation.
Speaker 4: The vast majority of the errors are unknown by the public.
Speaker 4: They are probably unknown by the patients themselves. People aren't
Speaker 4: told that there arers, and in fact, maybe even the
Speaker 4: fertility clinic doesn't know their errors. The instances that we
Speaker 4: know of where the wrong embryo was transferred to somebody
Speaker 4: because that embryo belonged to another couple, how do we
Speaker 4: know about that. It's because the child is of a
Speaker 4: different race than the couple. So how many times has
Speaker 4: that happened, but we're unaware of it because the child
Speaker 4: is of the race that the couple expected.
Speaker 2: Adam has represented some very high profile embryo mix ups
Speaker 2: over the years. It's given him a deep sense of
Speaker 2: the disconnect between how clinics present themselves and what's actually
Speaker 2: going on in the lab.
Speaker 5: The reason we don't.
Speaker 2: Know the true scope of errors and fertility clinics comes
Speaker 2: down to two things. First, there's no requirement for clinics
Speaker 2: to track or report their mistakes. Unlike hospitals, which must
Speaker 2: report certain adverse events, or airlines which must report in
Speaker 2: your Missus, fertil clinics can keep their errors secret. Second,
Speaker 2: when patients do discover mistakes and hire lawyers like Adam,
Speaker 2: those cases rarely see the inside of a courtroom. They're
Speaker 2: settled quietly with non disclosure agreements that ensure that details
Speaker 2: never become public. The clinic writes a check, the patient
Speaker 2: signs away their right to speak about what happened, and
Speaker 2: the error effectively disappears. No other patients will ever know,
Speaker 2: no regulator will investigate. The clinic can keep advertising its
Speaker 2: success rates as if nothing ever went wrong.
Speaker 4: So when you go into a fertility clinic in the
Speaker 4: United States. That lobby is beautiful. I mean it looks
Speaker 4: like you are in a four seasons hotel and you
Speaker 4: go behind the door that leads into a laboratory, and
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, I mean, you've entered into an
Speaker 4: entirely different space where there can be canister is knocked over,
Speaker 4: clothes on the ground, it can be dirty, and you
Speaker 4: go from the four seasons lobby to the back of
Speaker 4: a restaurant.
Speaker 2: Adam was speaking about IVF clinics generally there. He declined
Speaker 2: to say whether he had cases involving kind body. Adam
Speaker 2: is one of the few voices clamoring for more oversight
Speaker 2: in the fertility industry. When I reached out to doctors, embryologists,
Speaker 2: and other experts in the field, some people agreed, But
Speaker 2: I also found that many many people would approach the
Speaker 2: subject of regulation with me at all because they were
Speaker 2: afraid that even the mention of government oversight might tangle
Speaker 2: the fertility industry up in abortion politics. They are afraid
Speaker 2: of getting regulated out of existence.
Speaker 5: Since Roe v.
Speaker 2: Wade was overturned in twenty twenty two, Republicans have introduced
Speaker 2: a wave of fetal personhood bills in state legislatures around
Speaker 2: the country that would give fetuses and sometimes embryos, legal rights,
Speaker 2: and in February of twenty twenty four, the Alabama Supreme
Speaker 2: Court sided with couples who sued an IVF clinic after
Speaker 2: some of their embryos were accidentally destroyed. They sued for
Speaker 2: wrongful death and negligence, and the court sided with them,
Speaker 2: ruling that frozen embryos are unborn children.
Speaker 10: That embryo is in the eyes of many a person,
Speaker 10: and so they believe that that embryo should have the
Speaker 10: full rights of a living human being. And that may
Speaker 10: mean things like, gosh, you can't freeze them. And if
Speaker 10: any harm was to come to that embryo, in some
Speaker 10: people's minds, that might be a kin to murder.
Speaker 2: That's barb Koleura. She's been lobbying for fertility rights for
Speaker 2: over twenty years. If embryos were people, like the Alabama
Speaker 2: Supreme Court said, then handling them was suddenly a huge libel.
Speaker 2: If something happened, it was tantamount to murder. In the
Speaker 2: immediate aftermath, several clinics in the state paused offering IVF
Speaker 2: treatment it was too risky. This ruling changed the political landscape. Overnight,
Speaker 2: politicians who'd never mentioned fertility treatment suddenly had to take positions.
Speaker 2: This newfound political attention came with consequences. Anti abortion groups
Speaker 2: turned their attention to IVF, flooding Capitol Hill with policy proposals.
Speaker 10: What we see is policy recommendations that are called health
Speaker 10: and safety, and they're not about health and safety. They're
Speaker 10: really about restricting access to IVF. And when we look
Speaker 10: at those policy proposals, they don't look like they're good
Speaker 10: for patients. Has nothing to do with making it safer,
Speaker 10: has nothing to do with making it more accessible or
Speaker 10: even improving the outcomes.
Speaker 2: This is a tricky situation. Barb and many people in
Speaker 2: the fertility field I've spoken to fear any new rules
Speaker 2: around IVF because keep in mind, Barb has worked for
Speaker 2: two decades to ensure access to IVF and to push
Speaker 2: for insurance coverage. All of a sudden she's having to
Speaker 2: fight anti abortion activists. But then, what about all I've
Speaker 2: been reporting on in this series. What do we do
Speaker 2: about the embryos that are lost, mislabeled, or accidentally destroyed,
Speaker 2: or about women who feel pushed into unnecessary procedures, or
Speaker 2: about something like Lindbergh's baby project. Is there a way
Speaker 2: to introduce some protections for a patient who walks through
Speaker 2: the door.
Speaker 10: And so regulation could be a code word for restriction.
Speaker 10: We have to look at every attempt at that, But
Speaker 10: what I am focused on are those attempts where it
Speaker 10: is to restrict and not help patients.
Speaker 2: So that's the tension in a nutshell. In the current
Speaker 2: political climate, any attempt at regulation risks being weaponized by
Speaker 2: those who want to eliminate IVF entirely. The industry is
Speaker 2: at a stalemate.
Speaker 8: I would say that in healthcare behavior change happens for
Speaker 8: three reasons. One it's regulation, so there's full they have
Speaker 8: to Two it's financial incentives they make more if they
Speaker 8: do it. Or three is patient demand. Patients demand it
Speaker 8: and require it. There is no government regulation or self regulation.
Speaker 8: There are no incentives to do it. If they spend
Speaker 8: money to upgrade, they are losing money, so there is
Speaker 8: financial disincentive and patients don't know, so they are asking
Speaker 8: about it and making decisions about it.
Speaker 2: That's Lindsay Beck. She's a patient advocate and she's passionate
Speaker 2: about this work. When she was told two she was
Speaker 2: diagnosed with a rare tongue cancer. She had her eggs
Speaker 2: frozen back in the nineties when egg freezing was rare.
Speaker 2: It preserved her ability to have a family, and since
Speaker 2: that experience, she's spent decades trying to navigate this tension
Speaker 2: between access and safety standards in IBF for other families.
Speaker 8: Women want reproductor of autonomy and investors want growth, but
Speaker 8: then there are sometimes when it's misaligned.
Speaker 2: She points to one easy fix, digital tracking of sperm,
Speaker 2: eggs and embryos. She's also a firm believer in mandating
Speaker 2: that clinics report errors.
Speaker 8: Yes, no one wants them. No one wants from more
Speaker 8: government reporting. No one wants to have to report errors.
Speaker 8: No one wants patience to know these numbers because it's scary.
Speaker 2: Lindsey is a bit of an outlier in the industry.
Speaker 2: You don't often hear someone who is actively working in
Speaker 2: fertility calling for change. The demand for fertility services isn't
Speaker 2: slowing down. According to the latest data from the CDC,
Speaker 2: the number of IVF cycles performed in the United States
Speaker 2: has more than doubled over the past decade, with more
Speaker 2: than four hundred thousand cycles performed annually, and that number
Speaker 2: is expected to keep climbing. Meanwhile, private equity and venture
Speaker 2: capital firms continue to pour money into the fertility sector.
Speaker 2: Industry reports show that fertility startups raised over eight hundred
Speaker 2: million dollars in funding in twenty twenty three alone, with
Speaker 2: major chains being consolidated under private equity ownership. Today, more
Speaker 2: than forty percent of IVF cycles in the United States
Speaker 2: are performed at a clinic owned by private equity, and
Speaker 2: that percentage keeps growing and for the time being, there
Speaker 2: are no guardrails on the fertility industry. IVF Disrupted The
Speaker 2: Kind Body Story is reported and hosted by me Jackie Devalos.
Speaker 2: The series is produced by Sean Wen and Jilda Decarly,
Speaker 2: editing by Caitlin Kenney, Jeff Grocott, and Joshua Brustein. Blake
Speaker 2: Maples is our sound engineer and composer, fact checking by
Speaker 2: Anaga Robbins. Bloomberg Senior Executive Editor for Technology is Tom Giles.
Speaker 2: Our head of podcasting is Sage Bauman. You can reach
Speaker 2: us at podcasts at Bloomberg dot net. IVF Disrupted is
Speaker 2: a production of Bloomberg and iHeart Podcasts.