headlines after the woman he treated gave birth to octuplets gave emotional testimony last Wednesday during a hearing in which he is fighting to keep his medical license.
Beverly Hills-based Michael Kamrava is currently facing charges of gross negligence and violating professional guidelines. The California Medical Board earlier this month accused the 58-year-old doctor of implanting 35-year-old Nadia Suleman—then the mother of six children—with 12 embryos in January 2009.
The hearing comes nine months after the Medical Board went public with a 13-page complaint against Kamrava. The complaint stated that the Iranian-American specialist, who help pioneer in vitro fertilization (IVF), acted “beyond the reasonable judgment of any treating physician” by repeatedly providing excessive fertility treatments to Suleman, now widely known as Octomom.
In addition to charging Kamrava with implanting an excessive number of embryos in Suleman, the Medical Board further alleged Kamrava put his patient at risk by implanting so many embryos. Suleman, whose father is Iraqi, gave birth to the octuplets after the Iranian-born doctor had already helped her have six previous children through in vitro fertilization.
After being sworn in for the Medical Board’s licensing hearing in Los Angeles, Kamrava gave a tearful testimony of his emigration from Iran to the United States in 1968, when he was just 16 years old. “My family background is Jewish, and that was one of the reasons I came here,” Kamrava said through his tears.
Witness Dr. Suraj Achar, who had visited Kamrava’s office to review his record-keeping at the request of the fertility doctor’s lawyer, testified that Kamrava regretted the outcome of Suleman’s pregnancy and that they discussed strategies to reduce multiple gestation with future patients.
But during last week’s hearing, an expert witness for the state of California testified that Suleman’s medical records show Kamrava implanted 12 embryos in the pregnancy that gave Suleman octuplets; national guidelines recommend a maximum of two embryos for a woman her age. The court also heard that over the span of less than eight years, Kamrava repeatedly performed in vitro fertilization treatments for Suleman—implanting her with 60 embryos that resulted in a total of 14 children.
Suleman reportedly first approached Kamrava at his private practice in Beverly Hills for fertility treatments in 1997. At the time, she was 21-years-old and had been married to her then-husband, Marcos Gutierrez, for about a year. The couple separated in 2000, after realizing they could not conceive children, and in January 2008 divorced.
Despite separating from her husband in 2001, however, Suleman began IVF treatments facilitated by Kamrava. The IVF treatments resulted in four single births and one fraternal twin birth between 2001 and 2006.
Kamrava was educated in the United States. He was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Illinois and went on to study medicine at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine in Ohio. He later completed his residency at Cleveland’s Mt. Sinai Hospital and was a fellow at Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Hospital.
Depending on the outcome of the hearing, which is expected to last 10 days, the board could suspend or revoke Kamrava’s license to practice medicine.
by Grace Nasri