WEBVTT - Misconception: Big Baby 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:03.400 Now that s due and I had awkwardly agreed to 0:00:03.440 --> 0:00:06.440 become potential future co parents by putting embryos on ice, 0:00:06.880 --> 0:00:09.440 the question was where we would be putting these embryos. 0:00:10.080 --> 0:00:13.039 Where should I go to freeze? In New York It's 0:00:13.080 --> 0:00:16.079 a paradox of choice. Within ten miles of me, there 0:00:16.079 --> 0:00:19.680 were more than two dozen clinics. It felt paralyzed. This 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:22.680 seemed like a big decision. I'd talked to so many 0:00:22.720 --> 0:00:25.079 women who would drain their savings accounts to walk away 0:00:25.120 --> 0:00:27.440 with nothing. How could I make sure that I was 0:00:27.480 --> 0:00:30.600 giving us the best chance for success As a woman 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:32.920 in her mid thirties, I had long been swimming in 0:00:33.000 --> 0:00:35.200 targeted content for fertility clinics. 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:38.280 Meet Modern fertility, the test that teaches you about your 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:41.640 eggs and fertility hormones. Today, one in six couples has 0:00:41.680 --> 0:00:44.240 trouble conceiving. So we built an easy way to test 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:46.520 fertility hormones before you're ready for kids. 0:00:46.600 --> 0:00:49.040 Progeny is a leading provider of fertility benefits. 0:00:49.400 --> 0:00:52.360 Our mission is to help people build their families, Introducing 0:00:52.560 --> 0:00:56.360 kind Body, a new generation of women's health and fertility 0:00:56.400 --> 0:01:00.960 care with a redesigned patient experience that's accessible and intuitive. 0:01:01.280 --> 0:01:03.840 This last one kind Body. It stood out to me. 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:06.640 Kind Body came on my radar a couple of years 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:09.040 ago when they opened a location in the Bay Area, 0:01:09.319 --> 0:01:11.480 where I was living at the time. I went to 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:15.399 their opening party. There was this faux flower arch in 0:01:15.400 --> 0:01:18.440 the entryway and giant gold balloons that spelled out kind 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:22.039 Body Champagne, of course, and there were a lot of 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:26.039 women like me, thirties, professional made well jeans and black 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:28.959 ankle boots. And I'll admit it, I wasn't just there 0:01:28.959 --> 0:01:32.240 as a reporter. This was right after that bad breakup 0:01:32.240 --> 0:01:34.920 I talked about in episode one. Fast forward a few 0:01:35.000 --> 0:01:39.200 years later, I'm now thinking seriously about freezing embryos, and 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:42.440 I'm curious about kind Body. The company's pitch is that 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:47.000 it's trying to make fertility more friendly, unaccessible, unaffordable. The 0:01:47.040 --> 0:01:51.040 fertility industry has a bad rap. For kind Body that 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:56.639 presents an opportunity it stands out from its competitors. Venture 0:01:56.680 --> 0:01:59.160 capital and private equity has poured into this space in 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:02.400 the last five years. Twenty twenty three was a record 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:05.960 year for fertility VC deals. Kind Body was the largest 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:09.200 of those deals. The strong celebrity investors like what Apatro 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:12.360 and Gabrielle Union. It's raised more than three hundred million 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:16.240 dollars and open thirty five clinics. But as I look closer, 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:20.760 it seemed like Kindbody's rapid rise was also illuminating cracks 0:02:20.880 --> 0:02:24.520 in the system. I'm christ and v Brown, and this 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:35.200 is misconception. When you walk into Chymebody's New York City flagship, 0:02:35.520 --> 0:02:39.560 it feels a bit like a high end salot. It's 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:41.960 in a storefront on a trendy part of Fifth Avenue. 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:46.200 There are plush couches with yellow throw pillows in artful disarray, 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:51.360 chai ceilings with ornate columns, a display of vitamins topped 0:02:51.400 --> 0:02:53.480 with an overflowing floral arrangement. 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:56.800 Hopefully it doesn't look like your typical doctor's office. 0:02:57.360 --> 0:02:59.960 No doctor I have ever been to Kind Body's founding 0:03:00.000 --> 0:03:03.560 physician fahemos Asan gave me a tour. She told me 0:03:03.600 --> 0:03:07.720 that the aesthetics played directly into kind Bodies mission. It's 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:09.720 hard to even compare a kind Body to me, which 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:14.320 I've visited in episode two, met looked like a doctor's office. 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:18.639 As you walk through intentionally, there's no white coats, there 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:21.960 are no degrees on the walls, our clinics are really 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:26.200 intentionally built to be a blank slate for our patients, 0:03:26.320 --> 0:03:29.000 and so we're here to be a partner in your journey, 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:31.400 not that you're coming to our shrine. 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:35.680 And this kind of visibility brings in business. The company 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:37.920 even has a big yellow van that roams the streets 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:41.040 of cities offering fertility testing for cheap or even free 0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:44.280 as a way to get women in the door. Accessibility 0:03:44.360 --> 0:03:47.440 is also key to kind Body strategy. The company pitches 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:50.640 employers to offer fertility care as a benefit. In twenty 0:03:50.680 --> 0:03:53.120 twenty two, for example, they struck a big deal with 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:54.360 Walmart while. 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:56.680 Mart employees more than two point two million workers, and 0:03:56.760 --> 0:03:59.320 is teaming up with the fertility startup kind Body to 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:02.440 offer employees access to more than thirty fertility clinics and 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:04.120 IVF labs across the US. 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:07.960 It's opening up a brand new facility in northwest Arkansas. 0:04:08.520 --> 0:04:11.520 We say we want to do good by doing well, 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:14.880 and so you do good by bringing down the cost 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:18.040 of care to make it more affordable to more people. 0:04:18.080 --> 0:04:20.760 We want to democratize care. That's been our mission since 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:21.360 the beginning. 0:04:21.520 --> 0:04:25.520 That's kind Body's founder and CEO, Gina Bartesi I told 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:27.960 her that Kindbody had first caught my attention because of 0:04:28.000 --> 0:04:30.200 its big egg freezing push a few years ago. 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:33.000 The place you start when you're building a fertility company, 0:04:33.000 --> 0:04:35.120 in my opinion, is you start with egg freezing because 0:04:35.160 --> 0:04:38.279 they have discretionary income. Those women that are thinking about 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:41.120 egg frasing are not asking about success rates. The IVF 0:04:41.200 --> 0:04:42.239 cases come later. 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:45.920 This strategy seems to be working for Kindbody. This May, 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:48.960 it opened to clinic in the ritzy Newport Peach, California, 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:51.599 and plans to open more in Charlotte, Miami, and San 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:54.360 Diego before the end of the year. The company told 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:57.000 me that since twenty twenty two, the number of new 0:04:57.040 --> 0:05:00.719 patient visits has increased by seventy five percent. It has 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:03.680 also nearly doubled the number of employers who offer kind 0:05:03.720 --> 0:05:06.440 Body as a benefit. It expects to get forty five 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:09.520 hundred women pregnant this year. They call the babies born 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:13.120 at kind Body kind babies. In other words, at kind Body, 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:18.599 business appears to be booming. Multiple clinics that I interviewed 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:20.919 told me that this sort of growth and investment is 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:24.560 good for patients. That cost savings and better quality care 0:05:24.640 --> 0:05:26.919 gets passed on to patients when clinics are able to 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:30.960 expand into big nationwide clinic chains like kind Body, and 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:33.560 at least on the surface, kind Body have had something 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:36.600 very appealing to offer. Who doesn't want to feel like 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:38.960 they're going to a spa appointment instead of the doctor. 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:46.760 We'll be right back. After my initial fertility testing way 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:49.240 back in episode one, I made an appointment at kind 0:05:49.240 --> 0:05:52.400 Body for a freezing consultation based on the state of 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:55.120 my fertility. I wanted to know what to expect if 0:05:55.160 --> 0:05:59.200 I froze. My appointment coincidentally happened to be with Nicolenoys, 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:01.800 who we heard from an episode one. She was the 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:05.039 pioneering doctor who helped take egg freezing mainstream. She was 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:07.480 working there at the time. Kind Body has a little 0:06:07.520 --> 0:06:09.640 calculator in its app which it says it built using 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:12.920 clinical research. With my numbers, it estimated that I might 0:06:12.960 --> 0:06:15.719 need three or even four egg retrievals to get the 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:19.560 desired twenty egg number. Kind Body, for the record, said 0:06:19.600 --> 0:06:22.320 the calculator was just meant to quote empower patients with 0:06:22.400 --> 0:06:27.520 information rather than offer a concrete clinical guidance. Nicole sounded 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:30.799 more optimistic. She said two cycles was all I would 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:33.520 likely need. I told her I would think about it. 0:06:35.080 --> 0:06:38.280 The next day I checked my inbox. There was a 0:06:38.320 --> 0:06:41.520 flurry of messages from kind Body. I'd been signed up 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:44.560 for the start of my egg freezing journey. I had 0:06:44.600 --> 0:06:47.839 just nine simple steps to complete. There was an email 0:06:47.839 --> 0:06:51.120 about cost and another email asking if I had any questions. 0:06:51.600 --> 0:06:54.040 Then the next day a nurse called me. I told 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:56.840 her I was confused why anyone was calling me at all, because, 0:06:56.880 --> 0:06:58.880 as I had told Nicole, I wasn't sure what I 0:06:58.920 --> 0:07:01.120 was going to do or whether I was going to 0:07:01.120 --> 0:07:03.599 do it with kind Body. Over the next few months, 0:07:03.640 --> 0:07:06.120 I got countless emails urging me to do things like 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:09.560 join the summer freeze for twenty five percent off on 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:11.680 the kind Body app, I could just add a seventy 0:07:11.720 --> 0:07:14.240 five hundred dollars egg freezing cycle to my shopping cart 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:17.080 and check out like I was impulse buying a pair 0:07:17.120 --> 0:07:21.400 of very expensive shoes. It reminded me of this kind 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:23.720 Body infosition I had watched a few weeks earlier. 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:25.840 We want no regrets here. 0:07:26.000 --> 0:07:27.840 We can't go back in time. 0:07:28.000 --> 0:07:30.440 And we want to make sure that you have all 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:32.080 options available to you. 0:07:32.360 --> 0:07:35.160 But the longer you wait to come in, so those 0:07:35.160 --> 0:07:36.360 options start to join. 0:07:36.200 --> 0:07:40.720 The kind Bodies. IVF prices range from about fourteen thousand 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:45.280 dollars to sixteen thousand dollars excluding medication, and depending on location. 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:48.120 It's New York. Prices were on par with what I 0:07:48.120 --> 0:07:50.400 saw at other clinics in the city, and all of 0:07:50.480 --> 0:07:52.760 those prices were higher than the average price for an 0:07:52.800 --> 0:07:55.440 IVF cycle in the US, which is about twelve thousand 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:59.840 dollars according to Fertility IQ. I told Pasquale Patrizio about 0:07:59.840 --> 0:08:01.800 my experience a kind Body and ask him when he 0:08:01.880 --> 0:08:04.200 thought about it. He's the chief of the Center for 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:07.600 Reproductive Medicine and Infertility at the University of Miami, and 0:08:07.640 --> 0:08:10.240 he studied the effect of private funding on the industry. 0:08:10.920 --> 0:08:15.840 For me, what is really not correct, it's the pressure. 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:20.240 The fact that the next day you already got an 0:08:20.240 --> 0:08:23.240 email and messages from the clinics. Okay, are you ready 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:25.480 to start? Well, you already told them listen, I want 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:28.600 to think about but now they are already contacting you 0:08:28.760 --> 0:08:33.080 within twenty four hours. That's already a pressure for you 0:08:33.200 --> 0:08:35.920 to do something that they start to put you in 0:08:36.000 --> 0:08:38.040 the regret that if you don't do it, you are 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:40.920 really losing the opportunity out and you have now these 0:08:40.960 --> 0:08:44.360 guilty feelings, and so it's a kind of psychological maneuvering. 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:47.400 When I told kind Body about my experience, they said, 0:08:47.400 --> 0:08:51.400 the idea that it's pressuring patients is categorically false. While 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:54.880 it does engage in marketing campaigns like seasonal promotions. Kind 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:58.199 Body said, that's standard across the industry, and the right 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:01.400 it is standard. Are talked about some of those practices. 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:05.040 In an earlier episode Across the industry, Pasquali told me 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:08.719 clinics are often under pressure or peace investors, so they 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:12.800 push treatments on patients. He wasn't speaking specifically about kind Body. 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:17.199 Big fertility clinic chains could in theory, save consumers money 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:20.319 and make treatments more accessible by leveraging their market power 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:22.240 and lobbying for policy change. 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:26.440 So theoretically, by doing more volume, you should also be 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:30.959 able to offer less costly. You know, should be cheaper, 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:36.040 should be more economical. But this cost potentially cost saving 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:40.599 I so far, I've not been passed on to patients 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:42.840 or to payers. If you are working in a state 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:45.720 with the insurance that that are recovering. 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:49.160 Actually, by my calculations, when you adjust for inflation and 0:09:49.200 --> 0:09:52.559 include things like the cost of medication. IVF has gotten 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:55.280 more expensive in the US over the last few decades. 0:09:55.600 --> 0:10:00.440 Not cheaper are we doing good for patients? Law is 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:04.240 that the patient lost into these business transactions. 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:08.760 This tension between the bottom line and the patient. It's 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:11.439 existed for a long time. It goes back to how 0:10:11.480 --> 0:10:15.440 IVF came up in America. Attempts to create special regulations 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:19.000 for IVF have failed time after time, and a lot 0:10:19.080 --> 0:10:20.880 of that has to do with interference from the anti 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:24.640 abortion movement. Around the same time IVF scientists were making 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:28.000 big breakthroughs, the Supreme Court passed Roe v. Wade, which 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:32.800 rebbed up anti abortion activism. These activists also opposed IVF, 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:35.400 viewing the destruction of embryos in the course of IVF 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:39.680 the same as abortion. Their growing political force made lawmakers 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:42.840 hesitant to weigh in on IVF, even as countries like 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:46.520 the UK were creating new regulatory agencies for it. It 0:10:46.600 --> 0:10:49.480 also led to a ban of federal embry or research funding. 0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:54.200 There's also not widespread health insurance and fertility insurers normally 0:10:54.200 --> 0:10:57.400 weigh in on the best treatments in IVF. Patients are 0:10:57.400 --> 0:10:59.960 mostly left to figure out for themselves whether they're doctor 0:11:00.360 --> 0:11:03.400 is telling them something they need is really something they need, 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:07.719 or whether they're being upsold. All that means fertility medicine 0:11:07.800 --> 0:11:10.880 grew up as a business, a marketplace where clinics can 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:14.200 charge people tens of thousands of dollars to start a family, 0:11:15.120 --> 0:11:18.880 and as the industry has rapidly expanded the scale of issues, 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:25.800 it's grown too will be right back. Not long after 0:11:25.840 --> 0:11:29.360 I started reporting this podcast, my colleague Jackie Davelus, and 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:32.040 I both started hearing from people that there were problems 0:11:32.040 --> 0:11:34.920 at kind Body that weren't quite as visible as what 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:36.080 I had experienced. 0:11:36.720 --> 0:11:39.440 I had gotten a tip from a user on Reddit 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:44.400 that was commenting on kind of their experience at the company. 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:47.360 They were a former employee, and they basically told me 0:11:47.640 --> 0:11:51.359 you should really look into those laboratories where these IVF 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:53.160 treatments are really happening. 0:11:53.640 --> 0:11:55.640 She found that there had been a handful of incidents, 0:11:55.880 --> 0:11:59.520 particularly after the acquisition of another fertility clinic chain. 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:03.200 Embryos had been mishandled as a result of understaffing and 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:07.360 inconsistent lab protocols. Three of these accidents occurred in Kindbody's 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:10.400 Bryant Park lab in New York City, including one where 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:14.280 a patient's last embryo was damaged after accidentally being left 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:17.760 out in room temperature. Another incident occurred in a Kindbody 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:21.600 clinic in Chicago, where staff couldn't find a patient's embryo. 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:25.120 The patient wanted her embryo genetically tested, but staff couldn't 0:12:25.120 --> 0:12:27.559 find it when they looked where records indicated it should 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:27.880 have been. 0:12:28.600 --> 0:12:31.199 It was eventually found, but staff had to rifle through 0:12:31.280 --> 0:12:32.520 cride tanks to find it. 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:35.520 Kinbody told us that these incidents were a fraction of 0:12:35.559 --> 0:12:38.520 the more than seven thousand freezing and IVF procedures that 0:12:38.559 --> 0:12:41.839 they've handled. The company said its incident rate zero point 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:44.360 two percent, on par with the rate found in a 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:47.760 twenty eighteen study. They said they weren't understaffed, and they 0:12:47.800 --> 0:12:50.559 disputed that there was an escalation in lab issues as 0:12:50.559 --> 0:12:53.120 the company grew. Some of the employees I talked to 0:12:53.200 --> 0:12:56.280 actually said that even though Cobody's labs did face some issues, 0:12:56.600 --> 0:12:59.520 the equipment and standards at Combody were much better than 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:02.880 in other clinics where they'd worked. Issues and accidents in 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:05.760 the lab are by no means unique to any one clinic. 0:13:06.360 --> 0:13:10.280 They're happening across the industry. There have been other allegations 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:12.959 of things going wrong, like a recent lawsuit that alleges 0:13:13.000 --> 0:13:17.080 a California clinic called Ovation Fertility destroyed embryos belonging to 0:13:17.120 --> 0:13:20.040 at least eleven people when an incubator was cleaned with 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:23.439 hydrogen peroxide. The suit says that the clinic went ahead 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:26.640 with transferring the ruined embryos for pregnancy, not realizing what 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:29.559 had happened. A spokesperson for their company said it was 0:13:29.600 --> 0:13:32.360 an isolated incident which impacted a very small number of 0:13:32.440 --> 0:13:35.480 patients and that the company will continue to implement and 0:13:35.600 --> 0:13:39.880 enforce rigorous protocols to keep patients safe. And then there 0:13:39.880 --> 0:13:43.200 are the cases that have serious ramifications beyond what happens 0:13:43.240 --> 0:13:47.520 at any one facility. In Alabama, for example, several patients 0:13:47.559 --> 0:13:50.520 sued a fertility clinic after a hospital patient wandered into 0:13:50.559 --> 0:13:53.040 the room where their embryos were being stored and took 0:13:53.040 --> 0:13:56.480 them out of the freezer, destroying them. The case went 0:13:56.480 --> 0:13:59.040 all the way to the state Supreme Court, which ruled 0:13:59.040 --> 0:14:01.440 in February that the patients could sue the clinic for 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:05.880 wrongful death because they are embryos were children. That decision 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:09.760 temporarily halted IVF procedures at clinics across the state, with 0:14:09.880 --> 0:14:13.800 clinicians worrying they could be sued or worse anytime something 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:16.520 happened to an embryo in the normal course of treatment. 0:14:17.280 --> 0:14:20.240 But it also put a giant national spotlight on problems 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:23.600 that can occur away from patient's eyes in IVF labs. 0:14:25.360 --> 0:14:30.800 The issue of fertility misconduct, injuries, mishaps at fertility clinics 0:14:30.800 --> 0:14:34.080 and you know, almost always in the labs of fertility clinics, 0:14:34.200 --> 0:14:38.040 is a much larger issue than any of us knows, 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:39.240 including myself. 0:14:39.760 --> 0:14:42.120 This is on a wolf. He's an attorney, and when 0:14:42.160 --> 0:14:44.840 it comes to fertility industry shenanigans, he's kind of seen 0:14:44.880 --> 0:14:45.160 it all. 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:49.600 I cannot tell you the real scope of this problem 0:14:49.760 --> 0:14:55.520 because there is no reporting requirements, there is no central database. 0:14:55.640 --> 0:14:58.600 There is nothing that the public can turn to to 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:04.000 understand the scope or magnitude of the problem of fertility 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:05.680 center misconduct. 0:15:06.120 --> 0:15:08.400 Not long after he took its first fertility case, he 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:09.880 started getting a ton of calls. 0:15:10.440 --> 0:15:14.360 We started getting phone calls from other people, folks who said, oh, 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:18.480 my embryos were also dropped on the grounds my clinic 0:15:18.640 --> 0:15:23.440 also lost our embryos. Our clinic transferred the wrong embryos 0:15:23.520 --> 0:15:26.040 to us. You know, the list can go on and on. 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:29.200 He developed a bit of a reputation for these cases. 0:15:29.800 --> 0:15:32.640 Attorney Adam Wolf tells CBS News he plans to file 0:15:32.680 --> 0:15:35.680 a class action lawsuit against the San Francisco clinic this 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:38.960 week on behalf of the patients. He also filed a 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:42.600 second lawsuit against the Ahuja Medical Center outside Cleveland. 0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:46.840 Adam's firm even purchased the domain lost embryos dot com. 0:15:47.320 --> 0:15:50.240 Adam says he's handled more than one thousand fertility mishap 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:53.200 and misconduct cases over the last decade or so. In 0:15:53.200 --> 0:15:56.040 one of his biggest cases, in twenty eighteen, more than 0:15:56.040 --> 0:15:59.480 thirty five hundred eggs, embryos, and other genetic material were 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:02.320 lost when a cryo tank failed at Pacific Fertility Center 0:16:02.320 --> 0:16:06.040 in San Francisco. Has firm represented about one hundred patients. 0:16:06.440 --> 0:16:10.920 A jury awarded five patients nearly fifteen million dollars. That 0:16:11.040 --> 0:16:14.360 verdict was appealed and eventually settled out of court. But 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:17.240 I heard this a lot when talking to him. I'm 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:19.800 not allowed to talk about it. Adam can't talk about 0:16:19.800 --> 0:16:21.760 a lot of his cases because they settle. 0:16:22.080 --> 0:16:25.000 And I would say in eighty or ninety percent of 0:16:25.560 --> 0:16:28.960 our cases, we never even file a lawsuit because it 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:33.080 is settled with the clinic on terms that include confidentiality, 0:16:33.440 --> 0:16:35.800 such that the public never finds out about it. 0:16:36.440 --> 0:16:39.120 This is why we really have no idea how Cammon 0:16:39.200 --> 0:16:42.600 these kinds of mistakes are. Clinics are required to report 0:16:42.640 --> 0:16:45.600 their success rates, but they aren't required to report their errors. 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:48.360 A twenty twenty study found one hundred and thirty three 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:51.400 lawsuits were filed in the previous decade over loss discarded 0:16:51.480 --> 0:16:54.480 or damaged for his in embryos. That is probably only 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:57.960 a fraction of cases. Adam's caseload a loan seems to 0:16:58.000 --> 0:17:00.560 prove that. Adam says that a lot of the time, 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:02.840 what goes wrong as a genuine accident. 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:07.240 A lab tech looks up, you know, thinking about what 0:17:07.320 --> 0:17:08.960 movie he or she is going to see that night, 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:12.879 and just mixes up embryo one and two. Or there's 0:17:12.920 --> 0:17:17.480 a labeling problem and you know, couple a's embryo is 0:17:17.520 --> 0:17:22.680 either not labeled or labeled with the names of couple B. Right, 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:25.640 And you could see how that can happen. You can 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:28.159 people make mistakes, I get it. 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:32.320 Sometimes, of course it's more nefarious than that You've probably 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:34.639 heard about people doing twenty three in me and finding 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:36.920 out that they have all these siblings they'd never heard 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:41.119 of because a doctor covertly impregnated his own patients. All 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:43.439 of this is part of why industry critics lobby for 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:47.600 more regulation. They argue that fewer federal research dollars and 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:51.119 sparse insurance coverage has let business decisions become a major 0:17:51.200 --> 0:17:55.560 driving force and setting practice standards. So the argument goes, 0:17:55.920 --> 0:17:59.840 we need more regulation to prevent that. One expert suggested 0:17:59.840 --> 0:18:03.160 fortility clinics should be treated like hospitals, which are required 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:06.120 to report so called never events, the kind of stuff 0:18:06.160 --> 0:18:09.159 that should never happen, like leaving a sponge in a 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:13.199 patient during surgery or perhaps implanting the wrong embryo in someone. 0:18:14.119 --> 0:18:16.720 People who work in the industry argue that it does 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:18.360 have the proper amount of oversight. 0:18:19.119 --> 0:18:23.119 The labs are very regulated. In order to be having 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:26.000 a laboratory data going to perform em brology work, they 0:18:26.000 --> 0:18:28.800 need to be cap inspected, which is the College of 0:18:28.800 --> 0:18:32.880 American Pathologies. They need to be a clear inspected. The 0:18:32.960 --> 0:18:36.760 FDA also comes and does surprise visits. As an average 0:18:36.800 --> 0:18:39.760 we have every two years, all. 0:18:39.600 --> 0:18:42.280 The same rules apply to fertility doctors and labs that 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:45.520 apply to any medical doctors or labs. In the US, 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:48.480 most clinics are also members of industry groups that have 0:18:48.560 --> 0:18:52.760 their own sets of standards. Other countries do set more 0:18:52.840 --> 0:18:56.960 rules for fertility practices, though, the UK, for example, as 0:18:56.960 --> 0:19:00.600 a special regulatory body just for fertility clinics. They have 0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:03.280 to get a special license and follow all the guidelines 0:19:03.320 --> 0:19:06.320 in a three hundred and thirty page rule book, including 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:09.520 requiring two people to always id embryos when they're moving 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:12.359 around a lab so there are no mix ups. There 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:15.919 are no specific national fertility clinic regulations like that in 0:19:15.960 --> 0:19:16.439 the US. 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:20.880 We need to have checks and balances in the labs 0:19:20.880 --> 0:19:25.440 of fertility clinics that greatly minimize and hopefully eradicate those 0:19:25.480 --> 0:19:26.240 types of errors. 0:19:26.400 --> 0:19:29.240 He wasn't talking about any one specific clinic, but one 0:19:29.280 --> 0:19:31.520 thing that really struck me was that his cases are 0:19:31.560 --> 0:19:34.160 often against high volume clinics. 0:19:34.640 --> 0:19:39.399 They're just doing a ton of procedures and it's all 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:42.800 happening very quickly, and there's pressure to get it done, 0:19:43.359 --> 0:19:47.840 and it leads to mistakes, even if those clinics have 0:19:48.480 --> 0:19:53.040 proper standard operating procedures or SOPs. They're often not followed. 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:56.320 This explains why we are hearing about more and more 0:19:56.359 --> 0:19:59.040 of these mistakes as clinics backed by venture capital and 0:19:59.080 --> 0:20:02.440 private equity are under pressure to dial up the volume. 0:20:03.160 --> 0:20:05.680 Some patients don't have much insight into that side of things. 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:07.959 They have no way of knowing if their clinic has 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:10.440 settled a ton of lawsuits that never made it into 0:20:10.520 --> 0:20:13.600 the public eye. As I considered where I should freeze 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:17.679 my own numbers, I kept thinking about this. I like 0:20:17.720 --> 0:20:20.520 to make decisions based on data, and most of the 0:20:20.600 --> 0:20:24.160 data I wanted was either non existent or not that reassuring. 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:27.400 There still wasn't much data on women who had returned 0:20:27.400 --> 0:20:31.040 after freezing their eggs. One reason. YU study found that 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:33.159 just thirty nine percent of women who did try to 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:35.760 use their eggs wound up having a baby, so that 0:20:35.840 --> 0:20:37.800 number was high er if you were under thirty eight 0:20:38.080 --> 0:20:42.400 like me. Eventually I decided to freeze my eggs at NYU. 0:20:43.000 --> 0:20:45.080 It was a pioneer in egg freezing and still does 0:20:45.119 --> 0:20:47.760 a lot of freezing research. It had a good IVF 0:20:47.800 --> 0:20:50.520 success rate according to CDC data that I looked at 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:53.840 after going off birth control and waiting a few months. 0:20:53.920 --> 0:20:57.159 It was finally time to start my freezing cycle. A 0:20:57.200 --> 0:20:59.760 box of drugs the size of a big beach cooler 0:20:59.800 --> 0:21:03.640 a my apartment. Inside were all the supplies I would 0:21:03.640 --> 0:21:06.840 need to rub up my reproductive system. Four types of 0:21:06.840 --> 0:21:09.480 hormones and a shit ton of needles. 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:13.879 Hold the pen in one hand and with the other hand, 0:21:14.040 --> 0:21:17.000 pinch a fold of skin around the injection area. 0:21:17.400 --> 0:21:22.680 Okay, it's a big boy, have my GOSPATRITTI should just count? Okay, one, 0:21:22.720 --> 0:21:26.720 two of three? Nope, I still didn't go okay, I'm 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:28.640 not ready. Cannatch it one more time. 0:21:29.119 --> 0:21:32.080 Ensured the entire needle straight into the skin at a 0:21:32.119 --> 0:21:36.560 forty five to ninety degree angle. Press the dose snob 0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:38.040 down as far as it will go. 0:21:38.600 --> 0:21:48.600 Okay, I think I'm ready. One, two, three, I was 0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:52.000 in it. Now the dose reads zero, so I guess 0:21:52.040 --> 0:21:54.840 I did it right. I fucking did it right. Every 0:21:54.840 --> 0:21:57.040 morning and night I was stabbing myself in the stomach 0:21:57.080 --> 0:21:59.399