UC Regents Vote to Cut Off Pay for Asch and Balmaceda

SAN FRANCISCO —  The University of California regents voted Friday to immediately cease paying the salaries of two physicians implicated in the UC Irvine fertility scandal.

Fertility specialists Ricardo H. Asch and Jose P. Balmaceda, accused by the university of stealing eggs and embryos from some patients and giving them to others, will lose annual pay of $95,800 and $63,700 respectively.

UC President Richard C. Atkinson announced that the Board of Regents took the action because the two doctors have left the country and refused to cooperate with investigations into their alleged misconduct.

“Ordinarily if a faculty member under disciplinary review is placed on leave with pay, he or she is available to cooperate . . . in the investigation of the challenged conduct,” Atkinson said.

Both doctors sold their expensive Orange County homes last year. Asch, a native Argentine, is living in Mexico and Balmaceda has returned to his home in Chile. On Friday, Asch began a four-day grilling in Tijuana by about 20 attorneys representing his former patients. Asch declined to return to the United States for the deposition.

A third doctor accused in the scandal, Sergio C. Stone, has remained in Orange County and will continue to draw his annual salary of $74,100, university officials said.

All three doctors, former partners in UCI’s now-closed Center for Reproductive Health, were placed on leave from the UCI faculty last May amid allegations of egg-swapping, financial wrongdoing and research misconduct. University officials said Friday that formal disciplinary action is pending before a faculty peer review committee.

The U.S. attorney’s office and other authorities also are investigating possible tax fraud, smuggling of fertility drugs and mail fraud.

The three doctors have repeatedly denied intentional wrongdoing.

The regents’ action Friday broke with university policy, which calls for paying faculty members pending the outcome of disciplinary proceedings. UCI Chancellor Laurel L. Wilkening argued for an exemption to that policy at a regents meeting last November.

“These doctors continue to refuse to cooperate with the university in helping patients learn the truth about their care,” Wilkening said in a press release Friday.