06 Sep 10 LabCorp’s False Positive HIV Mistake of Egg Donor

LabCorp’s false positive HIV mistake will have long-lasting impact on Jim’s life. Here’s the email he sent me:

My wife and I cannot not have children on our own. That was devastating when we found out and it changed the course of our lives. Having babies is free right? Should be easy, right? Or so I thought.

Now, we were searching for solutions. Regardless of the sad news of us not able to conceive, we decided on egg donation. The reason why is so that my wife and I can experience the beauty of the birth experience. We also wanted to experience the joy of watching as a baby emerge from her womb, crying for protection, then quieting down when being cradled in my arms.

None of that would happen now. We used the services of Dr. Aykut Bayrak at the Pacific Reproductive Center in Glendale, Ca.  When getting ready for IVF the donor must go through a series of blood test, one of them is HIV.

We had selected our donor from a website. I wanted my wife to select someone who looked just like her. We found a beautiful young lady named Amber, who looked like my wife when she in her 20’s. We thought we could not lose with Amber because she was an experienced donor, whose contributions resulted in several infants. We were excited and confident.

Then Labcorb came into the picture. When Amber’s blood test was given to Lab Corp for HIV testing the result came back ‘positive’. At first we were shocked!  With a result of being HIV resulted her being automatically canceled as our donor. So what is the real problem here. SHE WAS NOT HIV POSITIVE! When she re-took the test it showed that she was HIV negative. We were relieved for Amber, but the Lab Corp result cost us a couple thousand of dollars for Amber’s tests, medicine, and care during this process. All for naught. Because of Federal rules that any donor who tests positive for HIV cannot donate their eggs, even if she test HIV negative later métronidazole sans ordonnance.

So we were forced to search for another donor. We found one whose eggs eventually failed to produce. Amber was the perfect donor since she was experienced and had proven results. The donor was someone not experienced. With the second donor we ‘ordered’ the Dr. Bayrak not to use Lab Corp. If he refused, we would have fired him on the spot and simply found another fertility clinic to work with. He complied and another lab was used.

The Lab Corp result may not have directly resulted in us not having children (so far), but three things for sure.

(1) We lost a perfectly good donor in Amber,

(2) We had to financially start over with the same test, medicine, and care for the new donor,

(3) It crushed our spirit.

I will be sure to request any lab professional I deal with, from my doctor or any social worker, that if Lab Corp is involved in their testing, we will simply walk away.

Jim