Octomom Nadya Suleman's doctor loses medical license: Why?
(CBS/AP) Dr. Michael Kamrava gained notoriety for implanting octomom-to-be Nadya Suleman with a dozen embryos. Now it's cost him his medical license.
The Medical Board of California revoked Dr. Kamrava's license "to protect the public," following a hearing in which the Beverly Hills fertility specialist acknowledged transferring the embryos into Suleman, then 33, who gave birth to octuplets on January 26, 2009.
The board said he should have transferred no more than two embryos.
"While the evidence did not establish (Kamrava) as a maverick or deviant physician, oblivious to standards of care in IVF practice, it certainly demonstrated that he did not exercise sound judgment in the transfer of twelve embryos to (Suleman)," the board said in its 45-page decision.
Fertility doctors often take steps to limit multiple births like Suleman's, because these so-called "mega births" can prove lethal for the mother and cause her babies to experience problems ranging from prematurity to cerebral palsy and developmental delays.
Kamrava tearfully testified that he implanted Suleman with 12 embryos because she insisted, and said that she would undergo fetal reduction if too many of the embryos continued to develop. Fetal reduction, also called selective reduction, is a procedure in which a doctor aborts one or more fetuses when there are too many.
But the medical board didn't buy that excuse, saying, "A fetal reduction procedure has risks, including the loss of all pregnancy, and to assign even a scintilla of responsibility to a patient who becomes pregnant and then elects not to follow through with a procedure that may jeopardize her (and possibly her family's) prized objective is troubling and telling."The American Society of Reproductive Medicine recommends that women over age 40 should be implanted with no more than five embryos. Women under 35 - like Suleman - should be implanted with no more than two embryos.
The American Society of Reproductive Medicine has more on fertility treatments.
