Tag: Health

The Story That Will Not Go Away!

Nadya Suleman apparently has bigger worries than taking care of her 14 children. Talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw says she may have to prove she can handle the load, or else have hospital officials withhold her newborn octuplets.

McGraw said the 33-year-old unemployed mother called him Tuesday, distraught that Kaiser Permanente officials told her they were concerned about the babies living at her home in suburban Los Angeles.

“What she is telling me is that unless and until she has a better living arrangement, that they are not likely to release the children to her,” McGraw told the Los Angeles Times.

“If they feel there’s a risk to a baby, they contact Child Protective Services and Child Protective Services would make a determination as to whether or not there’s a reason for concern,” Bermudez said.

A call to the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services was not returned Tuesday night.

Suleman has not responded to repeated interview requests from The Associated Press. Her phone has been disconnected and she no longer has a publicist.

So let me get this right….the people of Calif. will pay for the upkeep of the children…one way or the other….is that it?

The California Medical Board and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine are curious, too. Earlier this month they announced separately that they were investigating the Suleman case, stopping short of naming Michael Kamrava, the fertility doctor thought to have aided Suleman.

While much has been said about the social ramifications of the Suleman octuplets – such as issues about being a single mother, or the impact on the welfare system – these medical organizations need to investigate the case as they would any malpractice suit: Did the doctor deliberately put eight children at risk for serious medical conditions?

A study published in JAMA in 2005 followed over 200 ELBW babies until age 8 and found 14 percent to have cerebral palsy; 21 percent to have asthma; 10 percent to have vision worse than 20/200; nearly 40 percent to have an IQ lower than 85, which approaches a mental deficiency; and nearly 50 percent with poor motor skills.

Similarly, a study in Pediatrics in 2000 found that more than 50 percent of VLBW babies and up to 70 percent ELBW babies need special assistance at school.

Beyond all that…why has no one asked who paid for the comestic work she has done to look like Jolie?  Please someone make this story go away!……………………….

Yes Irene, There Is More

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.