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. Dina and b spent years trying
Speaker 2: to conceive. They had arduous retrievals, eggs that didn't fertilize,
Speaker 2: embryos that didn't take. But now the two women had
Speaker 2: made it to another transfer day, and this time was different.
Speaker 2: It was special because they were doing reciprocal IVF for
Speaker 2: the first time. The embryo that would be transferred into
Speaker 2: Dina was made with bees egg. It was a chance
Speaker 2: to create a profound connection for them both to their
Speaker 2: future baby.
Speaker 3: To be as genetically connected as we possibly could, for
Speaker 3: Dina to carry my embryo, to put it, blun cook
Speaker 3: my Bun.
Speaker 2: Sitting in the exam room of a c in Manhattan,
Speaker 2: they eagerly waited for their procedure to start, But now
Speaker 2: their doctor was telling them that the clinic had made
Speaker 2: a mistake. They don't remember the exact wording, but here's
Speaker 2: the gist of it.
Speaker 3: There's been a situation where the embryo you chose to
Speaker 3: be defrusted was not and we defrusted a different embryo,
Speaker 3: one that belonged to Dina, So they didn't defrost mine,
Speaker 3: they defrusted Dina's.
Speaker 4: Was this kind of the reason behind and the significance
Speaker 4: behind why you wanted to carry each other's embryos? Was
Speaker 4: that something that you had shared with your doctor?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, they knew. The nurses and the doctors all knew.
Speaker 2: As Dina and b tried to process what was happening,
Speaker 2: their doctor also looked rattled.
Speaker 6: You could tell she felt awful.
Speaker 5: Here's more fun could not stop apologizing.
Speaker 2: At one point, she brought in the clinics embriologists to explain. Now,
Speaker 2: the embryologist isn't someone that patients usually interact with, but
Speaker 2: they do very important work in IVF. These are the
Speaker 2: people that handle eggs, sperm, and embryos.
Speaker 3: He wasn't admitting to it being his lab even though
Speaker 3: it obviously was, and his oversight.
Speaker 6: I mean, god knows what happened as to why.
Speaker 5: We don't even know exactly what happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So they left the room and I think we
Speaker 3: both cried.
Speaker 5: So it was a plan that we had set out
Speaker 5: and talked a lot about in the process, for sure,
Speaker 5: and thought it was would have been so cool and
Speaker 5: unique and to not have that happen with devastating definitely
Speaker 5: one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: Dina and B were trying not to panic.
Speaker 5: We were in disbelief, to be honest and shuck, So
Speaker 5: what what happens now?
Speaker 6: What are our options?
Speaker 3: So we were absolutely crushed, Yeah, crushed.
Speaker 2: And they were confronted with a painful choice what did
Speaker 2: they want to do with the embryo that the lab
Speaker 2: had mistakenly defrosted?
Speaker 3: And the embryologists sort of took over the conversation and
Speaker 3: he was like, well, your options are to refreeze the
Speaker 3: one that we have defrosted, and we will then defrost
Speaker 3: the one you wanted and we'll transfer that, or we
Speaker 3: do the transfer with the one that we have defrosted.
Speaker 3: You don't even refreeze chicken. We're not refreezing an embryo.
Speaker 6: How can you do.
Speaker 3: That to something that could potentially be a baby?
Speaker 2: Dina and B had reason to be skeptical about this.
Speaker 2: Studies show that the process of thawing and refreezing can
Speaker 2: risk eroding the quality of an embryo. Because of this,
Speaker 2: experts told me it's relatively uncommon to thaw twice. They
Speaker 2: told me it's still possible to get pregnant, but it
Speaker 2: really depends on the quality of the embryo at the outset.
Speaker 2: Nothing is every one hundred percent guaranteed. But as Dina
Speaker 2: and B remember it, the kind Body embryologists said, the
Speaker 2: chances of the embryo transfer leading to a pregnancy would
Speaker 2: be unchanged. Dina and B just weren't buying it.
Speaker 3: To a point where you're definitely calling bullshit, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you were unbelieving it in no way. And also we
Speaker 3: didn't have many embryos at all. Every single one was
Speaker 3: so precious and valuable.
Speaker 2: The embryology lab is the heart of a fertility clinic.
Speaker 2: In here, patient's hopes of making a baby are in
Speaker 2: the hands of embryologists who do painstakingly precise work, and
Speaker 2: the environment has to be just right temperature, humidity, air quality,
Speaker 2: all of these things have to be absolutely perfect. When
Speaker 2: I first heard about dnnb's embryo mix up, I wondered
Speaker 2: if it was an isolated incident. After months of investigating,
Speaker 2: I learned that it wasn't. Kind Body didn't deny the
Speaker 2: mistakes happened, but didn't comment on specifics other than to
Speaker 2: say that it had completed incident reports. The company also
Speaker 2: said that accidents happen across the fertility industry. But here's
Speaker 2: what makes reporting on fertility so complicated. This is a
Speaker 2: field where success is never guaranteed. Even when things go
Speaker 2: more or less okay during treatment, heartbreak is built into
Speaker 2: the process. So how do you distinguish between inevitable disappointments
Speaker 2: and preventable mistakes? How many errors are too many? And
Speaker 2: in an industry with little oversight, how would anyone even know?
Speaker 2: From Bloomberg and iHeart podcasts, this is IVF disrupted the
Speaker 2: kind Body story. I'm Jackie Devolos. I wanted to understand
Speaker 2: how the mistake involving Dina and B's embryo occurred and
Speaker 2: if this was a one off air or a pattern
Speaker 2: of mistakes at kind Body. To do this, I reached
Speaker 2: out to dozens of current and former employees. I learned
Speaker 2: that in twenty twenty one, the same year that Kindbody
Speaker 2: thought the wrong embryo for Dina ANDB at its Brian
Speaker 2: Park lab, Kind Body accidentally destroyed two other embryos at
Speaker 2: the same location. Former employees told me one was dropped
Speaker 2: on the ground, another was damaged after accidentally being left
Speaker 2: out in room temperature. This happened to be that patient's
Speaker 2: very last embryo. She was offered unlimited free IVF to
Speaker 2: make up for the mistake, but she never managed to conceive.
Speaker 2: At Kind Body, It's unclear what or who is responsible
Speaker 2: for these embryos being mixed up or destroyed, but as
Speaker 2: I talked to former employees, some themes started to emerge
Speaker 2: about a series of conditions that opened Kind Body up
Speaker 2: to mistakes. According to former employees I spoke with, one
Speaker 2: of these problems was persistent understaffing. Tracy Sosa, the medical
Speaker 2: assistant who worked with Dina NB, said that their clinic
Speaker 2: in Princeton didn't have a full time doctor or an
Speaker 2: embryology lab even a year after opening Kind Bodies. Solution
Speaker 2: was to send doctors who worked in nearby clinics to
Speaker 2: see patients in New Jersey, and when patients like Dina
Speaker 2: and B needed procedures, they were asked to travel into
Speaker 2: Manhattan to other Kind Body clinics. This isn't standard in
Speaker 2: the fertility industry, but Kind Body told its staff it
Speaker 2: was a temporary solution.
Speaker 7: Here's Tracy, the doctors that did flow through there, they
Speaker 7: were just not there on a consistent basis to build
Speaker 7: the appropriate retour with the patient base. Not fair to
Speaker 7: the patient and not fair to the skeleton grew that
Speaker 7: they came there for almost two years.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Tracy watched while kind Body was opening new clinics
Speaker 2: in Atlanta, the Bay Area, in Orlando.
Speaker 7: We still didn't have a full time in day and
Speaker 7: they was taking on opening up another time practices. I
Speaker 7: bet you take care of the ones that are already
Speaker 7: open before you go ahead, Willing Nelly opening up another time.
Speaker 7: There were other practices that were already opened that we're
Speaker 7: having issues too, not just prime Stay. Why are you opening?
Speaker 7: Why do you have plans knocking down holes for another ten?
Speaker 7: Kind Body, Disney, kind Body.
Speaker 6: This get them, It's stop your nonsense.
Speaker 2: In comments for this podcast, kind Body said it's common
Speaker 2: industry practice for a fertility doctors to work in multiple
Speaker 2: locations within a chain of clinics. Tracy said the shuffle
Speaker 2: of patients back and forth between locations created confusion and
Speaker 2: made staff more vulnerable to making errors. The patients I
Speaker 2: spoke with said sometimes details about a treatment plan were
Speaker 2: miscommunicated from one nurse to another, or medication dosages got
Speaker 2: messed up, or a procedure was scheduled at one clinic,
Speaker 2: but the clinic performing that procedure didn't get the memo.
Speaker 2: And even when patients did end up at Kind Bodies
Speaker 2: clinics in Manhattan, whether it was in Bryant Park or
Speaker 2: Flat Iron, those locations were also struggling.
Speaker 8: We were bare bones with staff trying to be able
Speaker 8: to see patients. Although that's what it's supposed to be about,
Speaker 8: that was always the least important part to them.
Speaker 2: We're calling this woman Lauren. We are not using her
Speaker 2: real name. She and some others you'll hear from and
Speaker 2: the series asked for anonymity because Kind Body has threatened
Speaker 2: legal action against employees they believed were talking to journalists.
Speaker 2: We agreed to have a voice actor read, which she
Speaker 2: told us in an interview. Lauren was part of Kind
Speaker 2: Body's clinical staff in New York's Brian Park and Flat
Speaker 2: Iron clinics in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 8: They wanted to spend money on the things that were
Speaker 8: seen outwardly. Every week, we had huge bouquets of flowers
Speaker 8: in the office. They did a lot of videos. They
Speaker 8: had professional photographers, professional videographers coming in to do all
Speaker 8: these things. All that was way more important than medical care.
Speaker 8: They didn't want a staff, and so they went from
Speaker 8: four nurses to one. And they quit because they kept
Speaker 8: being told, well, we're a startup. We just need you
Speaker 8: to buck up. We need you to do the job.
Speaker 8: This is what it is. So they'd be working twelve
Speaker 8: hour days or more five six plus days a week.
Speaker 8: It was just we're going to read the same amount
Speaker 8: of existing work over those who were left.
Speaker 2: During this time, she says, the turnover also started to
Speaker 2: affect the most important part of an IVF clinic, the
Speaker 2: embryology lab. I reached out to former lab employees who
Speaker 2: told me it was hard to keep up with the
Speaker 2: mounting patient load and that training for new staff was rushed.
Speaker 2: They also said that lab leadership kept changing and embryologists
Speaker 2: were on the verge of burnout. So former employees said
Speaker 2: kind Body had major staffing problems, But they also said
Speaker 2: the company wasn't spending enough money on the labs themselves.
Speaker 1: I was brought on as the lead embryologist with potential
Speaker 1: to have some input and ideology about how this is
Speaker 1: going to be built out.
Speaker 2: That's Stephanie Maddie. Stephanie had been working as an embryologist
Speaker 2: for about seven years when she was recruited by kind
Speaker 2: Body in twenty nineteen. These were the early startup days
Speaker 2: when kind Body was offering hormone testing from the bright
Speaker 2: yellow bus. They hadn't completed construction on their first clinic yet.
Speaker 2: Stephanie specialized in egg freezing, but the company wanted her
Speaker 2: help in thinking about how to build out their embryology
Speaker 2: labs in IVF practice. Soon after she started the job,
Speaker 2: she started to feel concerned and began asking questions.
Speaker 1: How can we establish ourselves so that we are building
Speaker 1: a lab and what is our goal? These were just
Speaker 1: never conversations that were had or topics that seemed to
Speaker 1: come forth.
Speaker 2: Early on, she moved into a brand new clinic on
Speaker 2: Fifth Avenue in Manhattan along with other kind Body staff,
Speaker 2: and while she was impressed by its entrance and waiting room,
Speaker 2: she says that behind the scenes, the lab facilities were lacking.
Speaker 2: For one, there was no embryology lab at the new office,
Speaker 2: and while it did have a seaman analysis lab, she says,
Speaker 2: the way it was set up felt like an afterthought.
Speaker 1: They literally built it into this closet space. You would
Speaker 1: open the door, and basically it was a very awkward shape.
Speaker 1: It went to a point in the back. It's supposed
Speaker 1: to be a utility closet. It's not supposed to It's
Speaker 1: not a room, it's not an office, it's a utility closet.
Speaker 1: It seemed like so much money was being invested into
Speaker 1: like what it looked like forward facing. I was so
Speaker 1: surprised that it was like, oh no, no, we're doing
Speaker 1: Seaman analysis in basically this tiny closet space.
Speaker 2: The company told her a bigger space was coming, but
Speaker 2: for now, this was where her work had to be done.
Speaker 1: We had one dusk up against the wall, and usually
Speaker 1: you'd want a hood of some kind because if fumes
Speaker 1: are any kind of pathogens, and granted, as embryologists, we
Speaker 1: took every precaution necessary to be able to maintain a
Speaker 1: proper standard. When you have so much money being fueled
Speaker 1: into a company, and then you know, you go to
Speaker 1: the back and this is what you're dealing with. I've
Speaker 1: worked in everything from fully funded hospital labs, things like
Speaker 1: ventilation are super important and things like that which had
Speaker 1: not been established into the building, and this was just
Speaker 1: kind of like, you know what they called like a
Speaker 1: temporary situation. But it was just frustrating to see that again,
Speaker 1: I'm not like, I don't run businesses, but I do
Speaker 1: understand laboratories. And my specialty comes from, you know, being
Speaker 1: in different all different kinds of labs because when we're
Speaker 1: walking into our labs, we have to know what's going
Speaker 1: on because it directly affects our embryos.
Speaker 2: Ventilation systems are important because they filter out toxic fumes,
Speaker 2: vapors or dusts that could harm the sample. And embryologists
Speaker 2: is handling things like.
Speaker 9: You know, acid, aldehydes, styrene, which you know polystyreneates plastics.
Speaker 9: You know, a lot of this can come from petroleum products,
Speaker 9: so road construction glues, you know, laying down carpets, laying
Speaker 9: down tiles. There's a lot of these things that though
Speaker 9: what we call their embryotoxic. You know, these things get
Speaker 9: into your air, get into your incubators.
Speaker 6: You know, they can.
Speaker 9: Really affect how embryos grow they gave it affect pregnancy rates.
Speaker 2: This is Eva Schenkman. She's been an embryologist for over
Speaker 2: thirty years. After working for fertility clinics all over the
Speaker 2: East Coast, she struck out on her own as a
Speaker 2: consultant and started a training program for aspiring embryologists. Around
Speaker 2: the time the first couple of kind Body clinics were
Speaker 2: cropping up. Kind Body's founder, Gina courted her in hopes
Speaker 2: of bringing Eva on board to run some of its labs,
Speaker 2: and Eva said she had some questions.
Speaker 9: It had a very, very nice pitch, but I'm more
Speaker 9: interested in the science behind the labs than the front room.
Speaker 9: I want to see the back room. I don't care
Speaker 9: about your front room. I wanted to know more about
Speaker 9: the air handling systems they were building in the lab,
Speaker 9: what sort of technology they were incorporating.
Speaker 2: Think of air handling systems like a protective shield for
Speaker 2: the lab. Things like HVAC systems regulate temperature, humidity, and
Speaker 2: air quality to create the ideal environment for embryos to thrive.
Speaker 2: Even the smallest disruption in these conditions could affect whether
Speaker 2: an IVF procedure succeeds or fails.
Speaker 9: I've worked at a lab where we saw a drop
Speaker 9: in pregnancy rates and it was later attributed to the
Speaker 9: building over was getting the roof retarmaced for the helicopter pad,
Speaker 9: and our air intake system was just downwind from where
Speaker 9: the helipad was going to be, so as they were
Speaker 9: pouring all of that asphalt and all of those petroleum
Speaker 9: based products. That stuff was getting sucked right into our
Speaker 9: HVAC system.
Speaker 2: So Eva was skeptical about kind Body's founding strategy of
Speaker 2: putting everything labs and clinics under one roof in places
Speaker 2: with lots of foot traffic.
Speaker 9: Putting things in a retail heavy section, whether it's near
Speaker 9: a soul's sidechael or yoga or something else. It's like
Speaker 9: putting a scientific lab in a mall. You're gonna have issues.
Speaker 9: You got it probably close to the roof because you
Speaker 9: need to usually mount those systems on the roof. These
Speaker 9: air handling systems, they're not cheap.
Speaker 2: Eva said she noticed the labs were small, but she
Speaker 2: said kind Body told her that these labs were just
Speaker 2: a starting point. Bigger labs would be built down the line.
Speaker 2: But Eva also saw that some of Kindbody's leases were
Speaker 2: as short as five years in some cases. It didn't
Speaker 2: seem plausible to her that they would be rebuilt in
Speaker 2: time to manage the flow of patients that kind Body
Speaker 2: was aiming for.
Speaker 9: Just seemed like it was setting it up for these
Speaker 9: were going to be very short staffed. Labs weren't up
Speaker 9: to the size that I would have said that they
Speaker 9: needed for the volume that they wanted to.
Speaker 2: Do, Eva said, conversations with kind Body fizzled out.
Speaker 9: I would rather align myself with a project where I
Speaker 9: can build a lab and I want it to be
Speaker 9: one of the best labs out there that is going
Speaker 9: to be providing a safe environment for these embryos. I
Speaker 9: would have been very frustrated if that wasn't something that
Speaker 9: I was free to do.
Speaker 2: As for Stephanie, she said that to her, all of this,
Speaker 2: the tiny lab and the mcguivred closet, the promises of
Speaker 2: upgrades down the line, revealed what kind Body was actually prioritizing.
Speaker 1: As much as they were spending money, it seemed like
Speaker 1: forward facing and developing the front facing clinics like the
Speaker 1: facades I called them. There was constantly this, Okay, how
Speaker 1: can we save money, how can we cut costs? It
Speaker 1: was just again shocking to see so many offices opening up,
Speaker 1: and while that was happening, our embryology program felt like
Speaker 1: it was falling behind all of that.
Speaker 2: Disillusioned, Stephanie quit after just a few months. In the
Speaker 2: year after she left, Kindbody opened four clinics and started
Speaker 2: to pick up the pace. At one point in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one, there was a new clinic about every other month.
Speaker 2: I talked to a former employee who was hired to
Speaker 2: help with the expansion during this time. He also asked
Speaker 2: for anonymity to discuss kind Body A voice actor is
Speaker 2: reading what he told me that is.
Speaker 10: An astronomical growth spurt. When I was brought on, there
Speaker 10: were some problems with projects that were already underway.
Speaker 2: This included Brian Park, where former employees told me HVAC
Speaker 2: issues were a constant problem, but more issues cropped up.
Speaker 2: In Austin. Employees told me that a sewer pipe that
Speaker 2: released foul smelling gases into the clinic took weeks to fix.
Speaker 2: In Atlanta, the ceiling above the nursing station collapsed and
Speaker 2: unleashed a flood of water from the vent. When I
Speaker 2: asked kind Body about these incidents, it acknowledged the disruptions,
Speaker 2: saying the company took immediate action and that no patients, tissue,
Speaker 2: or embryos were directly impacted. But former employees said that
Speaker 2: instead of slowing down and fixing issues at existing clinics,
Speaker 2: the company just kept opening new ones. The employee who
Speaker 2: worked on expansion, said, Kind Bodies rush to open clinics
Speaker 2: started to catch up with the company.
Speaker 10: And what's so unfortunate is everything needs to stay perfect
Speaker 10: in these circumstances, because how fragile the situation is. And again,
Speaker 10: I think a lot of that was the hype of
Speaker 10: how amazing kind Body should be and can be, and
Speaker 10: it was a real pressing on all of us to
Speaker 10: go faster, faster, faster, faster, faster. And when you go faster,
Speaker 10: sometimes you miss an exit, sometimes you run off the
Speaker 10: road a little bit, and you just got to keep going.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. Dina and b, the couple from
Speaker 2: New Jersey, knew nothing about the concerns Embryology had raised
Speaker 2: about Kind Body's early labs when Dina was sitting on
Speaker 2: the exam table hearing that kind Body had defrosted the
Speaker 2: wrong embryo. And remember they were up in New York
Speaker 2: at the Bryant Park clinic because their clinic in Princeton
Speaker 2: didn't even have a lab or an embryologist. But here
Speaker 2: they were, and now they had to decide what to
Speaker 2: do next.
Speaker 3: We couldn't take a risk now of this refreezing process.
Speaker 2: At this point, Dina and B say, they didn't trust
Speaker 2: the doctor or the embryologist. They didn't have time to
Speaker 2: consult family, a friend, or another medical provider.
Speaker 3: So we were like, okay, absolutely devastated. Let's just put
Speaker 3: that aside because we'll handle that later. We were like, Okay,
Speaker 3: we've quickly got to shake that off because we've a
Speaker 3: got to make a decision and b got to be
Speaker 3: really happy with the decision because we know so much
Speaker 3: of a successful transfer is in your mindset and for
Speaker 3: your body to be aligned chemically with good vibes. Let's
Speaker 3: get positive and excited about whatever decision we're about to make.
Speaker 3: We don't want to refreeze whatever you have defrusted. We're
Speaker 3: going to go ahead and do the transfer. And they
Speaker 3: were like, okay, great.
Speaker 6: Let's go.
Speaker 2: Ten days later, they found out Dina wasn't pregnant.
Speaker 5: Well, with any unsuccessful transfers, we were pretty devastated, but
Speaker 5: I think with this one it was even more of
Speaker 5: a slab in the face.
Speaker 6: We were just scutted.
Speaker 5: That was a whole other set of emotions with that,
Speaker 5: because knowing what could have happened or what happened was
Speaker 5: another whole spiral down mentally and emotionally for us. You
Speaker 5: trust in people and doctors and whatnot, and you put
Speaker 5: all your good faith in them.
Speaker 2: Tracy Sosa, the medical assistant who had bonded with Dina
Speaker 2: and B at the clinic in Princeton, remembers how she
Speaker 2: felt when she heard that the wrong embryo was defrosted for.
Speaker 11: Them, and I was like, what happened? I could not
Speaker 11: believe my ears.
Speaker 7: Human error does happen, But you have to make sure
Speaker 7: that all the chains of command are followed and ID
Speaker 7: numbers are met. It's not just by name, it's not
Speaker 7: just by date of birth. I'm like shaken just thinking
Speaker 7: about it, because that's something that's just hammered into Europe, Like,
Speaker 7: oh my god, the chain of command, the hands that
Speaker 7: that goes through.
Speaker 2: Dina and B told me that in the weeks after
Speaker 2: the wrong embryo was defrosted, kind Body went into damage
Speaker 2: control mode.
Speaker 3: And they offered all their apologies and whatever, yeah, their
Speaker 3: lip service.
Speaker 2: To make up for the error. They offered to make
Speaker 2: the next transfer free of charge. Kind Body went to
Speaker 2: great lengths to assure Dina and B that this was
Speaker 2: a one off incident, that it had been handled. I
Speaker 2: wrote an article about lab errors at kind Body in
Speaker 2: October twenty twenty three, which included the embryo mix up
Speaker 2: with DNNB. I asked kind Body about that incident and
Speaker 2: two others at Brian Park that former employees told me about,
Speaker 2: one where an embryo was dropped on the ground and
Speaker 2: another when an embryo is damaged after accidentally being left
Speaker 2: out at room temperature. The company acknowledged them and said, quote,
Speaker 2: no kind Body Laboratory has had an incident, accident, or
Speaker 2: other issue that is unusual to what occurs in IVF
Speaker 2: laboratories generally. Kind Body said that across all of its clinics,
Speaker 2: it has an average incident rate of zero point two percent,
Speaker 2: a rate that it says is in line with other
Speaker 2: fertility clinics. I was curious about this number. I had
Speaker 2: done months of research into how often airs and IVF
Speaker 2: labs happen and had never come across it. There's a
Speaker 2: reason for that. In the US, fertility clinics do report
Speaker 2: certain things like the number of IVF cycles they perform
Speaker 2: and how many result in live births, but the government
Speaker 2: doesn't require them to report errors. So where was Kindbody
Speaker 2: getting the statistic?
Speaker 12: No one had really looked at this area, and so
Speaker 12: we you know, we had the feeling we were hopefully
Speaker 12: being responsible in the way we were doing things in
Speaker 12: the lab, but you know, you never know.
Speaker 2: Basically, that's Stanny Sakis. He's the chief scientific officer at
Speaker 2: Boston AVF, a clinic that's part of one of the
Speaker 2: largest fertility networks in the US. The number that kind
Speaker 2: body cited that came from a study of error rates
Speaker 2: that he conducted in one lab his lab. I interviewed
Speaker 2: doctor Sakis last year.
Speaker 12: When you know you're training people, everyone's busy, and you've
Speaker 12: got new people, one of the things you want to
Speaker 12: be careful of is that you know you're not making mistakes.
Speaker 12: So we were actually investigating to see if our number
Speaker 12: of errors had changed.
Speaker 2: He says. He tracked any break from the lab's protocols.
Speaker 2: Did anyone miscount the number of eggs retrieved, did someone
Speaker 2: misspell a name on a sample. Everything was recorded, even
Speaker 2: small mistakes that didn't affect the outcome. He crunched twelve
Speaker 2: years worth of data. He told me some of his
Speaker 2: colleagues were nervous about releasing his findings because no one
Speaker 2: else had done this.
Speaker 12: There were some concerns we were showing out dirty underwear.
Speaker 12: We were putting everything out there.
Speaker 2: In doctor Sakus's lab, Serious errors like those I was
Speaker 2: hearing about in kind bodies Brian Park clinic, the ones
Speaker 2: that disrupt an IVF cycle only happened once every two
Speaker 2: thousand cycles. Doctor Sakis stressed to me that his results
Speaker 2: were representative of his lab and his protocols, not the industry.
Speaker 2: I asked if he thought it was fair that kind
Speaker 2: Body used statistics from his study to compare incidents across
Speaker 2: its entire chain of clinics.
Speaker 12: To be honest, probably not.
Speaker 7: No.
Speaker 12: We would look at clinic or even per embryologists even
Speaker 12: to see if there's any indication. So I think it's
Speaker 12: hard to say to dilute out the numbers and procedures across.
Speaker 12: We have eleven clinics, but we look at each clinic separately,
Speaker 12: and one of the reasons you track these things is
Speaker 12: you want to see where the errors are occurring. We
Speaker 12: broke it.
Speaker 2: I asked kind Body for stats about error rates at
Speaker 2: particular clinics. The company declined to disclose them, using just
Speaker 2: the errors I knew about at its Bryant Park clinic.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty one, doctor Sakis helped me calculate the
Speaker 2: rate of serious errors there. For that year, the clinic
Speaker 2: had done about eight hundred and thirty total IVF cycles.
Speaker 2: My reporting identified three mistakes that significantly impacted the patients cycle.
Speaker 2: That was more than seven times the level of similar
Speaker 2: errors in doctor Sachs's study. We'll be right back back home.
Speaker 2: Dina and b wade to move forward. They were so
Speaker 2: dispirited they even talked about giving up on trying to
Speaker 2: carry their own babies.
Speaker 3: But we knew, you know, we had these two embryos
Speaker 3: and we were going to give it everything we got.
Speaker 3: And we definitely had the conversation though that if these
Speaker 3: two didn't work, like we were going back to the
Speaker 3: drawing board, and would that potentially include adoption because we
Speaker 3: were just so exhausted with the process.
Speaker 2: But if they did move forward, should they keep working
Speaker 2: with kind body or go somewhere new.
Speaker 3: It was definitely a conversation we had, Like, look, we
Speaker 3: moved clinics once we could move again.
Speaker 2: The idea of starting over again with another clinic was
Speaker 2: exhausting to Dina and B.
Speaker 6: We were just so in it.
Speaker 3: You get to a point where, like you only have
Speaker 3: so much capacity for what is ahead of you, and
Speaker 3: we had nothing left to be able to think about
Speaker 3: what that would involve. They knew us, they knew our history,
Speaker 3: like we wouldn't wrap our heads around starting from square
Speaker 3: one again.
Speaker 2: And like many patients who rely on insurance to pay
Speaker 2: for fertility treatment, Dina and b were tethered to kind Body.
Speaker 3: The benefit package was so appealing through Dina's employer that financially.
Speaker 6: We couldn't have gone anywhere else. We were stuck.
Speaker 5: I mean hundreds of thousands of dollars we were saving,
Speaker 5: for sure. It's incredible how expensive it is. I mean
Speaker 5: between the two of us it had been over one
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: They decided to take a vacation, a break from the appointments, injections,
Speaker 2: and disappointment. They got back to New Jersey feeling refreshed
Speaker 2: and ready to give IVF one more try with kind Body.
Speaker 2: After all, they still had two embryos left.
Speaker 3: And it just happens that our our cycles were aligned,
Speaker 3: and we're like, let's just both go. It's probably not
Speaker 3: going to work again because it hasn't done so far.
Speaker 3: But then our cycles synced up, literally exact to a
Speaker 3: point where we did the transfer within minutes of each other,
Speaker 3: and so we went in together and Dina sat on
Speaker 3: the table first, and they do the transfer and you
Speaker 3: watch it go in and then they were like okay,
Speaker 3: and I was already changed. I was like, don't even
Speaker 3: bother changing the piece of paper on the table.
Speaker 6: She's my wife. I'll just sit on it. It's not
Speaker 6: a big deal, you know, It's fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So then I just got on the table and
Speaker 3: they did the same.
Speaker 2: Dina and b were going through the process together, side
Speaker 2: by side.
Speaker 3: So we had zero hopes to a point where we
Speaker 3: weren't even counting usually, like you know, you count those
Speaker 3: ten days until you take the test, and every day
Speaker 3: is like a year. We were like, okay, don't even care.
Speaker 3: And then we went in and took the blood tests,
Speaker 3: and then our nurses at our own clinic were really
Speaker 3: sweet and they called us and they were like, you're pregnant.
Speaker 6: And we were like, oh my god, amazing, and they're like, no,
Speaker 6: but you both are.
Speaker 2: Now we're definitely going through all of this together.
Speaker 5: We kept thinking one of us is definitely going to.
Speaker 6: Go early because we're old.
Speaker 5: They said, once we got to forty weeks, they were
Speaker 5: going to induce us. So we both that morning, we're
Speaker 5: driving over to the hospital together pregnant drivers, drove ourselves
Speaker 5: into huge bellies and checked in and in the same
Speaker 5: room and everything up until the last bit of it.
Speaker 6: We were next door to each other.
Speaker 3: And then I was still going in labor, so I'd
Speaker 3: had my epidural, so I had to watch Dina give
Speaker 3: birth over FaceTime on the computer. On the computer, so
Speaker 3: my labor went through the night by the time I
Speaker 3: had to have a C section on Sunday morning, so
Speaker 3: Dina was able to get up and out of bed
Speaker 3: and could come into my surgery. So the twins technically
Speaker 3: because they were born sixteen hours apart, within twenty four hours,
Speaker 3: but it was the twenty first and twenty seconds, so
Speaker 3: they have different birthdays.
Speaker 6: So it took a long time to happen. But then
Speaker 6: when it happened, it was just wild.
Speaker 5: Yeah it is and it's crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we just we kind of put it down to like,
Speaker 3: we put this thing into the universe by transferring at
Speaker 3: the same time, and the universe came back and was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I see what you did here, and this is what
Speaker 3: you're going to get. And so for all the shitty
Speaker 3: stuff we went through, and not at any point did
Speaker 3: we think about having twins or being pregnant at the
Speaker 3: same time. That wasn't in our plan. But what we
Speaker 3: realized going through this is that you just can't have
Speaker 3: a plan, you just have to go with it.
Speaker 6: We were like, oh my god, now we have to
Speaker 6: go home with.
Speaker 5: Two babies, and we're both exhausted.
Speaker 6: And everything hurts and we're exhausted.
Speaker 2: Dina and b got their happy ending babies conceived and
Speaker 2: birthed at almost the same time through YVF after years
Speaker 2: of heartache, through luck, resilience, and science, but they were
Speaker 2: taken aback when kind Body wanted to feature them in
Speaker 2: a pr campaign.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they reached out.
Speaker 6: To share our story.
Speaker 2: Kind Body was on the ascent, It had ten clinics
Speaker 2: in counting, and it just raised a fresh round of
Speaker 2: venture capital that would allow it to expand even more.
Speaker 2: And Dina and Bee's remarkable journey two moms pregnant simultaneously
Speaker 2: giving birth just hours apart would have made for a
Speaker 2: perfect success story to show off during this moment of
Speaker 2: explosive growth.
Speaker 5: Yeah, maybe a month or so. They were following up.
Speaker 5: But we thought about it, but then we werely, no,
Speaker 5: it's just not something that we really feel like being
Speaker 5: a part of.
Speaker 3: We were like, yeah, you know what, you're not taking
Speaker 3: credit for this one. We're not being part of your promo.
Speaker 3: It would have just been so fake. They were ready
Speaker 3: to put us in front of the promotion for success,
Speaker 3: but you could guarantee that the process of getting to
Speaker 3: that point, they weren't going to be ready to talk about.
Speaker 3: So what they had done wrong or mishandled, we knew
Speaker 3: wasn't going to be part of the story, and it's
Speaker 3: part of our story.
Speaker 2: Kind body went ahead without them. They had momentum, they
Speaker 2: were already on track to open new clinics and had
Speaker 2: begun planning to go public. The company also promised Dina
Speaker 2: and b that what happened to them wouldn't happen again
Speaker 2: to any patient.
Speaker 3: We got emails from our doctor saying that there had
Speaker 3: been meetings about this case, not only internally within our clinic,
Speaker 3: but also when they had national meetings, and this came
Speaker 3: up to the effect of changing procedurally what happened in
Speaker 3: the lab in terms of defrustating embryos, and so they
Speaker 3: told us that the procedures were going to change because
Speaker 3: of this, to make sure it never happened again.
Speaker 2: Coming up on IVF Disrupted the Kind Body Story.
Speaker 11: On the day of the transfer, however, things went from
Speaker 11: bad to worse. The clinic staff were unable to identify,
Speaker 11: Oh my god, which embryo was ours because they had
Speaker 11: some unlabeled embryos in their storage.
Speaker 6: And I don't remember a word. They just stunned in
Speaker 6: front of me. I was crying. They told us they
Speaker 6: don't have the embryo.
Speaker 2: IVF Disrupted The Kind Body Story is reported and hosted
Speaker 2: by me Jackie Devallos. The series is produced by Sean
Speaker 2: Wen and Jilda to Carly, editing by Caitlin Kenney, Jeff Grocott,
Speaker 2: and Joshua Brustein. Blake Maples is our sound engineer. Voice
Speaker 2: acting in this episode was provided by Diana Johnston, Mark Leedorff,
Speaker 2: and Tina Marie Murray. Fact checking by Aiica Robbins. Bloomberg's
Speaker 2: Senior executive editor for Technology is Tom Giles. Our head
Speaker 2: of podcasting is Sage Bauman. You can reach us at
Speaker 2: Podcasts at Bloomberg dot net. IVF Disrupted is a production
Speaker 2: of Bloomberg and iHeart Podcasts.