the California woman dubbed “Octomom” is facing charges of gross negligence and violating professional guidelines at a hearing by the California Medical Board this week.
The board Monday accused Dr. Michael Kamrava, 58, of implanting Nadia Suleman—the mother of 14 children—with an excessive 12 embryos during her most recent pregnancy in January 2009.
The hearing comes nine months after the Medical Board went public with a 13-page complaint against Kamrava. The complaint said the Iranian-American, a pioneer with in vitro fertilization (IVF), acted “beyond the reasonable judgment of any treating physician” by repeatedly providing excessive fertility treatments to Suleman, whose father is Iraqi.
The Medical Board further alleged that Kamrava put his patient at risk by implanting too many embryos, putting the mother and her babies in danger.
Suleman, who achieved celebrity status after giving birth to the octuplets, received in vitro fertilization treatments from Kamrava after she had already had six children at home. At the time, she was divorced, unemployed and living off of food stamps at her mother’s house.
National guidelines suggest that women below the age of 35 should not be injected with more than two embryos during the procedure.
The board also accused Kamrava of negligence because he failed to refer Suleman, who could not support the children on her own, for a mental health evaluation. Kamrava failed “to recognize that [her] behavior was outside the norm and that her conduct was placing her offspring at risk for potential harm.”
Kamrava is the director of the West Coast IVF Clinic in Beverly Hills. He was expelled from the American Society of Reproductive Medicine in September, after the medical society cited his behavior as detrimental to the industry. His medical license, however, remained valid and he continued to run his own practice.
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.
During his hearing Monday, California Deputy Attorney General Judith Alvarado said, “I believe that Dr. Kamrava exceeded a standard of care and he acted below the standard of care in his treatment of three patients that are outlined in the accusation. The testimony was he implanted an excessive number of blastocyst embryos into patient N.S. [Nadia Suleman] over the course of the treatment with the respondent.”
The board also accused Kamrava of being negligent in his treatment of two other patients. Kamrava allegedly implanted too many embryos in one patient, resulting in the death of a fetus, and failed to refer another woman to a cancer specialist after finding cysts on her ovaries.
Suleman, 35, 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.
But even after birthing six children, reports state Suleman frequently returned to Kamrava to receive more fertility treatments, which Kamrava willingly gave.
In a 2008 interview on NBC’s Today Show, Suleman claimed Kamrava had implanted six embryos into her. All six of them took and two of them split into twins. Suleman gave birth to the world’s longest-living octuplets. January 26, 2009.
Despite her recent fame and related cash payments from the tabloid media, Suleman continues to struggle to pay rent; she is now facing a $450,000 payment on her home.
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.
