Ricardo Asch

Ricardo Hector Asch (born 26 October 1947) is an obstetrician, gynecologist, and endocrinologist who worked with reproductive technology and pioneered gamete intrafallopian transfer (GIFT). He has been accused of unethical practices at the University of California, Irvine's fertility clinic: the Orange County Register's investigations into these practices led to that paper's receiving the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Asch studied at the University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine graduating in 1971. In 1975 he moved to the United States and worked with Robert Benjamin Greenblatt at the Medical College of Georgia before his reproductive endocrinology fellowship at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Among his many publications were his pioneering experience with GIFT and research on oocyte donation. In 1986 he joined the University of California, Irvine (UCI). In 1990 he became the Director of the Center for Reproductive Health of UCI heading the infertility program. Asch was named Assistant Dean of UCI the same year. He lectured worldwide and accrued two honorary professorships by 1994.

In 1995, the Orange County Register broke the story that Asch—then Chief of the University of California, Irvine's Center for Reproductive Health—and his two partners were accused of taking women's eggs without their permission for use by other patients. These eggs were fertilized and the resulting embryos transferred to these other women some of them then conceiving. At least 15 live births resulted from the alleged practice. At that time the misappropriation of human eggs was not considered a crime. However, numerous civil lawsuits were filed, and UCI paid out more than $27 million to settle patient claims. Auditors from KPMG Peat Marwick investigated the clinic and found that almost $1 million with cash money allegedly had been privately pocketed. Asch and colleagues Jose Balmaceda and Sergio Stone were indicted on charges of mail fraud and income tax evasion. Asch went to Mexico, Balmaceda to Chile, while Stone stayed in the US and was convicted of insurance fraud in 1997 and paid a fine.

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