Jan 4 (Reuters) – Two couples have sued fertility technology company CooperSurgical, claiming that a solution made by the company for growing embryos for in vitro fertilization was toxic and killed the embryos they hoped to use to have children.
In a pair of lawsuits filed in California Superior Court in Los Angeles on Thursday, the two couples said CooperSurgical belatedly recalled several lots of its so-called embryo culture medium late last year, after the embryos were lost. They said the company has not made any public statement about the recall, leaving fertility patients in the dark.
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In vitro fertilization uses eggs and sperm to create embryos and then grows them in the culture medium until they are implanted in the uterus. The lawsuits claim that the plaintiffs’ fertility doctors were “shocked” when embryos stopped growing soon after being placed in the culture medium.
The lawsuits by the two unnamed couples accuse the company of defective design and manufacture, failure to warn and negligence, and seek unspecified money damages.
According to one of the lawsuits, the couple’s doctor told them he had learned directly from CooperSurgical that the culture medium was to blame.
CooperSurgical, one of the largest fertility technology companies worldwide, already faces at least one other similar lawsuit filed in December.
“The families deserve answers,” Adam Wolf of Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane Conway & Wise, a lawyer for the plaintiffs in the two new cases, said in a press conference. “This is not a problem that CooperSurgical can sweep under the rug.”
Wolf said that while the scope of the alleged harm caused by CooperSurgical’s culture media was not yet known, its products had been shipped all over the world and he expected more cases to be filed.
The cases are A.B. et al v. CooperSurgical Inc et al, and E.F. et al v. CooperSurgical Inc et al, in the Superior Court of California for the County of Los Angeles.
For plaintiffs: Adam Wolf of Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane Conway & Wise
For CooperSurgical: Not available
Full Story: Reuters January 4 2024
