The mother of octuplets was implanted with those embryos at a Beverly Hills fertility clinic run by a well-known — and controversial — specialist who pioneered a method of implantation. Dr. Michael Kamrava’s name emerged Monday as a result of an interview aired Monday on NBC with Nadya Suleman, who gave birth to eight babies Jan. 26.
Over the past two weeks, the identity of Suleman’s fertility doctor has been a source of great mystery because of questions over the ethics of implanting numerous embryos in a woman who already had six children.
In the NBC interview, Suleman did not identify her doctor by name, but said that she went to the West Coast IVF Clinic in Beverly Hills — of which Kamrava is director — and that all 14 of her children were conceived with help from the same doctor. In 2006, Los Angeles TV station KTLA ran a story on infertility that showed Kamrava treating Suleman and discussing embryo implantation.
Kamrava graduated from the University of Illinois and went to medical school at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, according to state records and his Web site.
Some fertility specialists said Kamrava is a controversial figure in the field.
An in-vitro procedure typically costs between $8,000 and $15,000. Asked on NBC how she was able to afford the treatments, Suleman said she had saved money and used some of the more than $165,000 in disability payments she received after being injured in a 1999 riot at a state mental hospital where she worked.
She also told NBC that she does not intend to go on welfare, though her publicist confirmed Monday that Suleman already receives food stamps and child disability payments to help feed and care for her six other children.
Suleman’s publicist Mike Furtney said she receives $490 a month in food stamps. Furtney said Suleman did not want to disclose the nature of her children’s disabilities or the nature of those payments.
There will more to this story to come, of that I am sure. A PUBLICIST? Why does she need the PR? I smell a book and/or a made for tv movie.