Five years ago, Jason Diaz underwent major surgery to battle a rare cancer. His stomach has been removed. Diffuse gastric cancer is a hereditary disease and he did not want to pass it on.
So when he and his wife, Melissa, decided to have kids, they made a plan. They would go the in vitro fertilization route with genetic screening. Their baby would then not have to suffer the same disease as his father.
Now the couple is suing a fertility clinic in Pasadena. They say a doctor transferred an embryo with the stomach cancer mutation and their child, now a year old, will eventually have to have his stomach removed.
“Every day my heart aches for my little boy,” said Jason Diaz, “knowing the pain and challenges that await him.”
The pair fought back tears and spoke at a press conference on Wednesday announcing the lawsuit.
According to the complaint, Jason Diaz, 32, had his stomach removed in 2018 after he was diagnosed with diffuse stomach cancer. Doctors discovered that he had a rare mutation in the CDH1 gene, which is linked to an increased risk – more than 80% – for such cancers.
The couple, who took steps to ensure that any embryo Melissa Diaz would carry would not have the mutation, chose to go to Huntington Reproductive Fertility Center in Pasadena. In January 2021, she was impregnated via embryo transfer at the facility, the complaint says. The child, a healthy boy, was born in September.
In July 2022, the couple tried to have another baby at HRC Fertility by IVF. An HRC employee sent Melissa a form listing the embryos that were stored during the first procedure.
The first line of the form showed an embryo transferred to Melissa in January 2021 with a “mutant allele detected” for hereditary diffuse gastric cancer. The transfer date made her realize it was her child, then 8 months old.
The complaint alleges that when the Diazes contacted the facility in a panic, they were met with silence and then received an “edited, falsified version” of the same report in October — with crucial information removed.
This second report, included in the complaint, was the same as the first, but without important details: the handwritten notes about which embryos were transferred when, as well as the sex of each embryo.
In Wednesday’s virtual press conference, an emotional Melissa described her son as a “very happy boy” who is “very talkative and friendly” and “likes to see new things.”
The complaint states that the child develops cancer without preventive gastrectomy or gastric removal. That procedure is associated with serious and lifelong medical complications.
The couple’s attorney, Adam Wolf, said this was “another disaster in HRC’s history of misusing patients’ genetic material and committing other serious fertility misconduct,” referring to another lawsuit against the clinic.
In that lawsuit, a couple — also represented by Wolf — claims they wanted a male embryo, but instead their surrogate mother was impregnated with a female embryo, according to City news service. The case will go to trial in November.
HRC, a subsidiary of Keck Medicine of USC, issued a statement Wednesday. “We deeply sympathize with the situation of this family,” the statement said. The Diazes “wanted to have a male embryo transferred, which we did according to the express wish of the family and in accordance with the highest care.”
The doctor named in the complaint was not listed on the HRC Pasadena website on Wednesday.
