Fertility fiasco

HEADLINES

One risk cosmetic surgery patients take is not getting the desired result due to the surgeon's incompetence or negligence.

Patients of Dr. Laguna, however, endured more than the pain of complications and financial loss, so they are suing the California-based plastic surgeon, US media reported.

Their lawsuit cited scarring and infections after the doctor allegedly fumbled their surgery. The plaintiffs also accused Dr. Laguna of requiring them to strip bare, touching their bodies without permission, having unlicensed technicians perform some of his work, and posting pictures and videos of their bodies online without their consent to promote his service.

Laguna would brag about his craft and allegedly body-shamed patients in numerous videos posted on social media. In one clip cited by the LA Times, an unconscious patient is shown face down on the operating table with her butt out in the open, and the doc describes the big behind as having volume, New York Post reported.

A fertility doctor's malpractice, however, appears to have been more serious than the plastic surgeon's faulty behavior and salacious manner.

A former patient of Dr. Merle Berger's sued the former Harvard Medical School professor and founder of one of the US' largest fertility clinics.

Sarah Depoian, 73, of Maine, filed the lawsuit after her daughter's shocking online discovery of her ancestry.

Carolyn Bester, 42, of New Jersey, said she received DNA results after doing a DNA home test from Ancestry.com and 23andMe as she explored her history earlier this year, NBC News reported. The website identified two relatives whom she contacted.

Bester learned that she was related to a granddaughter and second cousin of Berger's, and she told her mom that the doctor was her biological father.

Depoian underwent artificial insemination in 1979 under Berger at the Boston IVF Fertility Clinic that he founded, resulting in a successful pregnancy the following year. Instead of an unknown donor's sperm, she accused Berger of using his own sperm in the intrauterine insemination procedure that got her pregnant, according to the damage suit filed in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.