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by Robb Fulcher
Out on Prospect Avenue, in a largely nondescript midsection of Redondo Beach, sits a medical complex that has drawn more than its share of the media spotlight over the years. It served as home to the important South Bay Medical Center until 1998, and continues to house the influential Beach Cities Health District.
But off to the side of the complex, in separate offices from the money-distributing, headline-gobbling health district, sits a quietly busy fertility center that is independently rated among the nation's best.
Well known to thousands of happy parents if not the public at large, the physicians and scientists of Reproductive Partners Medical Group are among the world's leaders in the area of in vitro fertilization and other fertility methods, as they help to populate the South Bay and beyond.
As chance and reproductive efficiency would have it, the center has played a pivotal role in the existence of Hermosa Beach's "First Baby," the now 4-year-old daughter of a city councilwoman, and the baby-to-be of a recent Hermosa councilman. Is the city's political future in the hands of Reproductive Partners? Would a third political baby make up a voting quorum?
Councilwoman Julie Oakes didn't speak to those questions, but she did express her gratitude to the Partners after hormone therapy helped her carry her daughter Geneva to term following miscarriages in the past.
"They were always there, they were very helpful," said Oakes, speaking via cell phone as she and her daughter drew chalk goldfish out on the pavement. "They monitored me very closely to make sure I didn't have the same problem."
Six weeks after Geneva was born to Oakes and her husband Lee, the entire city council presented a plaque to the Partners, thanking them for their part in the birth of the "first baby" of Hermosa.
Physician Arthur Wisot of the Partners, a boyishly enthusiastic 60-year-old who also served as Oakes' OB-GYN, delivered Geneva at about 3 a.m. Feb. 8, 1996 at Little Company of Mary Hospital.
Recent Councilman Bob Benz and his wife Patricia Spiritus Benz, owner of Hamilton Gregg Brewworks, also sought the clinic's help after trying to get pregnant the old fashioned way for five years.
Spritus Benz, now 45, was not producing eggs like she did in her prime, and after extensive browsing in the fertility marketplace the couple settled on Reproductive Partners and opted for in vitro fertilization using donated eggs.
The woman serving as donor was a second cousin of Spiritus Benz, a 39-year-old San Diego woman who also was past her reproductive prime.
"I think my chances were about 30 percent," Spiritus Benz said.
She and her cousin engaged in a delicate reproductive ballet as the Partners used medications to synchronize the women's hormones, preparing one for the production of multiple eggs at just the time when the other would be primed to receive them, after fertilization by the ex-councilman.
"They totally controlled our hormones," Spiritus Benz said. "To give you an idea, the whole thing cost us $20,000, and about $8,000 was for injections and medications."
When the time came, physicians drew 19 eggs from the donor's ovaries, managed to successfully fertilize eight of them, and implanted four into the body of Spiritus Benz. She became pregnant with a girl who is due in December.
"We are so fortunate," she said.
Among
the best
In the complex and unpredictable world of baby making, the 15-year-old Reproductive Partners - with offices in San Diego, Long Beach, Fountain Valley and Burbank as well as Redondo -- boasts unusually high success rates.
The center was ranked among the top 10 in the U.S. in a 1998 "Redbook" magazine survey, and also made the top 10 in a similar 1994 survey in "U.S. News & World Report."
"Since 1988 we have always been among the top centers in the country in success rates, which we are very proud of," Wisot said as he sat in one of the Redondo offices, surrounded by the trappings of science and a shelf full of fertility figurines from various cultures.
The Partners regularly roam the planet to take part in the development of newer and better ways to aid fertility and to reduce multiple pregnancies, a task that dominates much of the specialty's research efforts.
A number of the partners recently returned from Korea, where they studied and helped to develop a new technique to reconnect fallopian tubes with only minimally invasive surgery.
"We're sort of the Lakers of in vitro fertilization," Wisot said.
Quadruple-blessed
The founder of the center, physician David Meldrum, experienced a burgeoning of his interest in the fertility field 25 years ago, when his wife Claudia could not get pregnant without treatments to help her ovulate. She received the treatments, got pregnant, and gave birth to quadruplets.
In those days the ultrasound viewing of the womb was more primitive, and the couple found out about the multiple pregnancy bit by bit. An early ultrasound showed two fetuses, and a later one showed three. When it was time for delivery, out came three babies, and then a fourth.
"I have four 25-year-olds, two boys and two girls," said Meldrum, who is 55.
Although the stress of raising multiple babies can wreak havoc and even divorce, the couple found themselves coping well.
"You get very efficient, and very fast. My wife was very well organized, and that helped," Meldrum said.
"People adapt," he said. "It's hard for me to imagine all our attention focused on one child, or two."
Fertility frontier
Multiple pregnancies significantly increase the chances of serious developmental problems, and the Partners work hard to remain in the forefront of research to reduce the chances of multiple pregnancies.
During the recent Korea trip, Partners took part in the study of yet another new technique to help reduce multiple pregnancies by reducing the number of embryos that must be placed inside a woman's body during the process of in vitro or "test tube" fertilization. In that form of assisted reproduction, eggs are removed from a woman's ovaries, fertilized with sperm in a test tube, then returned to the woman's uterus, bypassing the fallopian tubes.
The technique studied in Korea allows physicians to better determine the embryos' viability before placing them inside the mother's uterus, permitting them to use as few as two embryos in many cases. The goal is to prevent multiple births while still giving the woman a high chance of conceiving and carrying the pregnancy to term.
"Reducing the number to two embryos doesn't eliminate the incidence of triplets, but it greatly reduces the chances," Meldrum said.
Meldrum has helped establish guidelines for the voluntary accreditation of fertility centers, and he is supporting a bill before the State Legislature that would make accreditation mandatory for new centers.
Historic twins
Beyond the South Bay, the Partners have enjoyed some portion of their proverbial 15 minutes of fame.
In August of last year Wisot was written up in People magazine for helping a woman get pregnant in the world's first case of twins born of separate mothers.
The prospective mother, Becky Ripley of Del Mar, had a sister who had agreed to serve as a surrogate mother, receiving an embryo from Ripley to carry to term. But while her sister prepared to do her part, Ripley continued to seek expert help for her own problems with conception.
"She had a hunger to be pregnant," Wisot said.
It was Wisot who concluded that Ripley's troubles stemmed from a thin uterine lining, and not poor quality eggs. The fertility wizard prescribed "the simplest thing in the world," baby aspirin, to increase blood flow and aid Ripley's chances of pregnancy.
Ripley and her sister both received implanted eggs fertilized with sperm from Ripley's husband, and, voila! Both women conceived, and now Ripley and her husband are raising twins.
"This is my greatest joy, to help people have families," Wisot said. "It's not just about babies, it's about families."
Prospective surrogate mothers are screened carefully by organizations specializing in that aspect of assisted reproduction, and the women rarely report negative experiences, Meldrum said.
"The surrogate organizations are very good at screening them and picking them, and supporting them during the pregnancy. They consider it a failure if the surrogate does not have a positive experience," Meldrum said. "Second thoughts, when a woman ultimately doesn't want to give up the baby, are virtually nonexistent, and of course that is illegal in California."
Unlike Ripley's sister, most surrogates are not related to the intended mother.
"They are usually women who enjoyed being pregnant, who enjoyed the experience so much that they want to help others do it," Meldrum said. "Everyone's different, but some women really enjoy being pregnant. It's like a hormone high."
The down side
In the science of fertility, even a history of leading success rates does not mean that everyone will be helped.
"The hardest thing to deal with is failure," Wisot said.
"In physical science the same approach works the same way every time. In biological science the same approach does not necessarily work the same way every time. That's the way biology is," he said. "The hardest part is when someone fails."
Highways and superhighways
Reproductive Partners' extensive web site, which may receive more than 200,000 hits from around the world in a given month, can be reached at www.2reproduce.com. The site includes a Q&A portion which "offers information, but not medical advice," Wisot said.
Meldrum has authored hundreds of scholarly articles and papers and serves on the editorial boards of three medical journals focusing on fertility.
Wisot authored the book "New Options for Fertility: A Guide to In Vitro Fertilization and Other Assisted Reproduction" in 1990 and co-authored, along with Meldrum, "Conceptions & Misconceptions: A Guide Through the Maze of IVF and Other Assisted Reproduction Techniques" in 1997.
"What we've tried to do is boil the information down and make it readable," Wisot said. "I looked at other books and they were too technical. 'The vitelline membrane does such and such' -- who cares?"
Wisot has served as an on-air medical affairs reporter for KHJ-TV Channel 9 in Los Angeles, and has appeared as a guest on national programs including "Good Morning America" on ABC, "Sonya Live" on CNN, "HOME" on ABC and the "NBC Nightly News."
At one point he was an on-air host of two national Lifetime Medical Television shows that were aimed at physicians, but attracted a large enough lay audience to penetrate into the Neilsen ratings.
"We had quite a large audience of hypochondriacs watching every week," Wisot said. ER