'Heartbroken' couples claim California IVF clinic implanted dead and toxic ... trends now

A leading IVF clinic knowingly implanted dead embryos into would-be mothers in an attempt to cover up their fatal mistakes, a lawsuit claims.

Nine California couples allege that bungling lab workers at Ovation Fertility destroyed the embryos with harmful cleaning chemicals during storage.

The suit says that the embryos would have died 'instantly' when they were put in storage, and that workers then knowingly implanted 'these dead embryos into the would-be mothers.'

The clinic did so, according to the lawsuit, despite the risks of complications such as ectopic pregnancy, where the embryo implants in a fallopian tube rather than in the womb.

One couple, Brooke Berger, and Bennet Hardy, now 37 and 33, said they were 'heartbroken' after discovering Ovation Fertility might have destroyed their last two embryos, which were their final hope to start a family.

'When we found out that there was no way this would have ended in a successful pregnancy, we were just so disappointed and heartbroken,' Ms Berger said.

'It was devastating physically and emotionally to learn that after I had endured all the injections, medications, and painful and invasive procedures, it ultimately was for nothing,' she added.

'It just feels very disrespectful. To have no acknowledgement of guilt on their part, to trying to silence us. 

'It's just so disrespectful to not be treated as a priority for that, to not have them convey any understanding of the damage they have caused - us and many other people. I'm just shocked that they're treating us so poorly.' Ms Berger.

'Seeing [my wife] go through all this physically and mentally, and then for this to happen, it's really frustrating,' Mr Hardy said.

Ovation Fertility is a national storage treatment and IVF laboratory in Newport Beach that bills itself as one of the US' leading fertility labs.

The company offers IVF, where an egg is fertilized by sperm in a test tube and then the resulting embryo is inserted into a woman.

Ovation also offers 'safe, secure short and long-term storage for frozen eggs, sperm and embryos,' the website says.

A single IVF cycle — including genetic testing — is estimated at $25,000.

But the new lawsuit alleges Ovation 'hired inexperienced, cheap, unqualified, and untrained employees to cut corners and maximize profits - at the expense of the health and safety of its patients and their embryos.'

The filing claims that a lab embryologist wrongly used hydrogen peroxide or a similar cleaning agent instead of a sterile solution like distilled water in the incubator that stored the frozen embryos.

All nine couples claim Ovation used high quality embryos which should have had a 75 percent or above chance of success from January 18 to January 30.

But the odds were zero percent because the clinic knowingly used nonviable embryos, according to the complaint, and none of the women became pregnant.

Ms Berger and Mr Hardy moved to Orange County, Calfornia, in July last year, and shipped their remaining two frozen embryos to their new doctor, who used Ovation labs. It would be their fifth round of IVF.

Ms Berger had already undergone months of hormone shots, as well invasive and risky medical procedures to retrieve eggs and prepare for implantation. 

'I still have nerve pain from those injections, that takes months to go away. My husband was rearranging his work so that he could administer these medications for me,' she said.

'And then this whole time, we're just trying to maintain hope that all of what you're doing is worth it, that you're

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