Peiffer Wolf: Leading U.S. Fertility Law Advocate Urges “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” to Distance Reality TV Show From Doctor Sued for Fertility Fraud
A San Diego woman sought out the help of Milgram in 1988 for artificial insemination, which resulted in the birth of her son.
Adam Wolf, a leading U.S. lawyer handling fertility, IVF, and related genetic material lawsuits, is urging the producers of the successful reality television program “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” to distance the show from a San Diego area doctor who is being sued for fertility fraud. In a letter sent to the “Kardashians” producers, the Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane & Conway (Peiffer Wolf) attorney asks for a disclaimer on all future airings of the October 1st episode or for the doctor in question to be edited out of future airings altogether.
In the October 1st episode titled “Journey to Healing,” Scott Disick is seen speaking favorably and at length about the IV treatment he is receiving from Dr. Phillip Milgram.
What is not disclosed to viewers is that less than two weeks before that airing date, a fertility fraud lawsuit was filed against Dr. Milgram, who has a checkered history of practice in California, New York, and Las Vegas.
A San Diego woman sought out the help of Milgram in 1988 for artificial insemination, which resulted in the birth of her son. She alleges that Milgram lied when he told his then-patient that he would use the sperm of a healthy and anonymous sperm donor, and he instead intentionally inserted his own sperm into her.
In his letter to the “Kardashians” producers, Wolf notes: “This horrific brand of misconduct has been referred to as medical rape. To be clear: Dr. Milgram and other perpetrators of such insidious acts should not be honored and celebrated on your show.”
The lawsuit naming Milgram also contains a host of other troubling details not disclosed to viewers of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians”:
“Based on allegations regarding his mistreatment of numerous patients in 1992-93, (Milgram) surrendered his California medical license in 1999. The Board of Medicine charged him with gross negligence, repeated negligent acts, incompetence, failure to maintain adequate medical records, excessive treatment, prescribing Xanax and Prozac to his nurse-girlfriend (a drug addict who died by suicide shortly thereafter) without a good-faith examination or medical indication to support the prescription, practicing medicine while intoxicated, and using drugs or alcohol in a manner injurious to himself. Defendant was charged with performing an abortion on a patient who was not pregnant, performing other unnecessary surgical procedures, and failing to obtain informed consent to surgical procedures. New York suspended his license around that same time.”
“In 1999, Defendant was living and practicing in Nevada, but did not initially inform the state licensing authority of the charges and surrender of his license in California or that his license had been suspended in New York. Nevada revoked Defendant’s medical license effective September 13, 2000 due to his failure to provide such notification.”
“As part of the proceedings preceding his (2004) reinstatement to medical practice, Defendant acknowledged he likely treated patients while under the influence of drugs.”
In the letter to producers, Wolf states: “Obviously, I know that neither Kim Kardashian nor anyone associated with ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians’ would knowingly promote the services of someone with the background of Dr. Milgram. I am well aware you would not intentionally tout as a medical expert and implicitly endorse someone like Dr. Milgram. More specifically, I do not think that someone of Ms. Kardashian’s demonstrated leadership on fertility issues would cast a positive spotlight on a medical professional currently being sued for fertility fraud.”
The Milgram case and another like it filed on September 16th by Peiffer Wolf are the tip of the iceberg in hundreds of fertility fraud cases that will emerge across the U.S. thanks to home DNA test kits.
Wolf, who has been in the forefront of pushing for tougher regulation of IVF clinics and other medical facilities handling genetic material, said that abuses by the rapidly growing number of medical professionals within the IVF/fertility industry will not stop until the U.S. imposes tighter regulation.
In August 2019, Peiffer Wolf published The Fertility Center Regulation Crisis in the U.S., a report calling on Congress to impose a system of tight and highly transparent IVF clinic oversight. In addition to identifying several glaring weaknesses and the general lack of regulatory oversight of the IVF/fertility centers in the U.S., the Peiffer Wolf report identified the much tougher government standards in the United Kingdom as an excellent model for this nation.
ABOUT PEIFFER WOLF CARR KANE & CONWAY
The law firm Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane & Conway maintains offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Cleveland, St. Louis, Austin, and New Orleans. In addition to handling numerous fertility fraud cases, Peiffer Wolf has handled a multitude of cases in which medical professionals and facilities were accused of either destroying or losing eggs, embryos and other genetic material.
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