A Memphis couple is preparing to take legal action after a St. Louis-based fertility clinic lost their embryo.
In an interview with NBC affiliate station KSDK published on Thursday, Aug. 22, Mary and Jimmy Gorman said that they had been trying to have a baby for years — and decided to travel from Memphis, Tennessee, to Missouri to work with the reputable Dr. Sherman Silber at the Infertility Center of St. Louis to undergo IVF.
“I’ll do anything it takes to have a family,” Mary told the outlet, adding, “I heard really good things about this doctor.”
According to the Mayo Clinic, during IVF — or in vitro fertilization — doctors collect eggs from a person’s ovaries and fertilize them with sperm in a lab to create an embryo, which is then placed in the person’s uterus. A full cycle of IVF takes about two to three weeks, the clinic states.
The Gormans told KSDK they shelled out more than $70,000 and spent nine months undergoing hormone injections to retrieve two viable embryos.
Mary told the outlet that her two embryos were retrieved on Sept. 19, 2023. The first one was transferred on Feb. 7 this year, and it was not successful. Months later, on May 14, she arrived at the Infertility Center of St. Louis for her second transfer attempt and had gotten as far as putting on a hospital gown when her doctor gave her some unthinkable news — she would not be able to undergo the procedure.
“Because they lost it. They don’t know where it was at,” Mary alleged to KSDK, telling the outlet that the clinic had no idea where her embryo was.
“I don’t understand why that would happen or why it happened. They can’t answer me. They won’t give me an answer,” Mary added.
Josh Tolin, a Missouri-based medical malpractice attorney, whom KSDK reported is representing the couple, stated that although he plans to file lawsuits against the center, as well as St. Luke’s Hospital — where the center stores embryos — he fears that the Gormans are unlikely to find out what happened to their lost embryo.
“It’s a finger-pointing process,” Tolin told KSDK. “I don’t know that we’ll ever get the truth.”
“They made a mistake. They screwed up,” Tolin alleged.
The Gormans told KSDK that they are afraid their missing embryo has something to do with St. Luke’s announcement in July that it would no longer be offering fertility storage services. According to the outlet, as well as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the hospital began moving some of its storage to ReproTech, a facility in Garland, Texas. Mary alleged to KSDK that she did not receive any warning.
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In a statement given to KSDK, St. Luke’s wrote that “Dr. Silber informed his patients of this transition with multiple communications beginning in the Fall of 2023.”
“Patients have been notified that, upon request, their specimens are available to be transferred to a different fertility clinic or storage service if they so choose,” the statement continued, in part. “Nothing has changed for our patients other than the storage location of their specimens.”
“St. Luke’s dedication to providing exceptional care to every patient, every time, is the foundation of everything we do. St. Luke’s has always, including during this transition, maintained stringent policies and practices related to the collection, preservation and storage of reproductive specimens and embryos, and any claims to the contrary are without merit,” the hospital’s statement added.
Neither Silber nor the Gormans’ attorney was immediately available for comment.
“That could have been my chance to have a child,” Mary told KSDK of the incident.
“I don’t want this to ever happen to anybody again,” she added. “This is horrible.”
