How a Failed IVF Treatment Led to Multiple Lawsuits against a Billion-Dollar Medical Company
Different patients have filed a lawsuit against CooperSurgical, a medical fertility product supply company, for supplying defective medical products. According to the patients, the product botched their In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) by stopping the growth of their embryos and destroying them in the process.
About CooperSurgical
CooperSurgical is a leading medical company in fertility medicine and related products. Due to the huge demand for IVFs, the firm quickly became a household name in the industry.
The firm deals with large-scale sperm and egg banks, and genetic testing for embryo development. In 2023, it declared a $480 million revenue from fertility products alone. It declared that it has steadily seen double-digit revenue and profit growth in the past 3 years.
Additionally, as of early this year, the company had bought five smaller fertility companies. This feat contributed to the trust many medical centers and clinics placed in CooperSurgical’s fertility products. Medical centers claimed to have used products from CooperSurgical because they are nutrient-rich liquids called “culture media” that can assist in developing embryos.
Problem with the Culture Media
However, multiple claims reported that this liquid led to the failure of patients’ IVFs. That is because the culture media was lacking in magnesium, an essential component in the development and stabilization of embryos. This led to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recalling products around November.
Building on the failure of the product to assist the development of embryos but instead destroyed them, families have filed lawsuits against the company. As of February, there were eight lawsuits in court against CooperSurgical. According to reports, the culture media had destroyed over 100 embryos.
Although CooperSurgical refused to comment on the lawsuits and the product, data from the FDA suggest that the media affected more than the eight families that filed the lawsuit. The report stated that over 1,000 culture media bottles were defective, and one bottle could care for more than one patient. By that calculation, about 20,000 patients might have used the defective media.
“Before this, CooperSurgical had contacted all the media centers that purchased the media, telling them of the possibility of the product destroying the embryo. The clinics were advised to stop using the media on IVF patients,” observed personal injury attorney Jeffrey Phillips of Phillips Law Group Injury Lawyers.
The Lawsuits
Of the eight lawsuits, two are the most popular:
Lawsuit One
In Los Angeles, a couple reported that CooperSurgical’s culture media was responsible for destroying over 100 embryos It would appear that fertility products have been on the wrong end of different defective products.
The attorney of the Los Angeles couple claimed that due to the high demand for fertility products, most firms do not adequately test them before releasing them for use. The attorney further revealed that she had filed five lawsuits against CooperSurgical alone on defective culture media in the past.
Lawsuit Two
In Virginia, a couple reported that their insurance fertility coverage allowed them to try out IVF for the first time. It was hard for them to achieve this because many insurance companies do not cover IVF treatments. But, to their despair, all six of their cultivated embryos stopped developing after climbing the impossible odds.
The wife blamed herself for the faulty embryo, ignorant that CooperSurgical’s defective culture media led to the fault in the embryos.
Interestingly, all eight lawsuits against CooperSurgical have similar complaints to those mentioned above. The problem was the same—their perfectly healthy embryo was no longer developing due to the defective culture media used to enhance growth.
