UES Fertility Clinic Impregnated Woman With Wrong Embryo, Suit Claims

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — An Upper East Side fertility clinic is being sued by a Massachusetts couple who claim that doctors mistakenly gave them another family's embryo — the second time that one of the doctors involved has been accused of such a mix-up.

The suit was filed in federal court late last month against the New York Fertility Institute — based on Fifth Avenue near East 83rd Street — and two of its doctors. The man and woman are identified under the pseudonyms John and Jane Doe.

According to the suit, the couple visited the clinic starting in the fall of 2020 for a series of egg retrievals, with the woman eventually undergoing an in-vitro fertilization procedure last July.

Weeks later, the couple was "overjoyed to learn" that Ms. Doe had become pregnant, sharing the news with family and friends. By September, however, the first "red flag" appeared," when a prenatal screening revealed that the baby's DNA did not match the mother's.

The couple placed a series of worried calls to the Fertility Institute, but received only assurances from specialists that they "could not have transferred the wrong embryo," according to a lawsuit.

As subsequent tests showed the same results, one of the doctors, Khalid Sultan, claimed that the mother must have a rare condition called "mosaicism" in which a person can have two different forms of DNA in her body, the suit claims. But by November, two more tests found that there was a zero percent chance that either parent was biologically related to the baby, leaving the couple "upset and overwhelmed with panic and confusion."

Eventually, by December, the couple made the "traumatic" decision to terminate their pregnancy nearly six months in — just days before it would have become illegal, the suit states. Meanwhile, an independent embryologist that the couple had hired was repeatedly denied meetings with Michael Femi Obasaju, the clinic's director of in-vitro fertilization, according to the lawsuit.

Only later did the couple learn that Obasaju had previously been accused in the 1990s of a similar embryo mix-up — a revelation that, had the Does been aware, would have stopped them from choosing the clinic.

"To this day, the Does neither know whose embryo was transferred into Ms. Doe’s uterus," nor do they know what became of her own embryo that was supposed to be given to Ms. Doe.

The clinic did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and has not commented for other articles about the lawsuit published by the Washington Post and Daily Beast, among other outlets.

The state health department told the New York Post that it is now investigating the New York Fertility Institute, viewing the lawsuit's claims "with the utmost concern."