East Texas doctor accused of ‘fertility fraud’ may face unethical conduct, but not treatment, investigation

AUSTIN — Brushing past its staff’s initial reluctance, the Texas Medical Board voted last month to investigate an East Texas fertility doctor for possible “unprofessional and unethical conduct” for using his own sperm to inseminate a woman who selected another donor.

On Oct. 18, the board voted to reopen and continue an investigation of Nacogdoches obstetrician-gynecologist Kim McMorries.

Over the summer, an out-of-state expert on fertility fraud complained to the regulatory agency that McMorries’ actions – even for the mid-1980s — didn’t meet the required standard of care of infertile women.

On Wednesday afternoon, the board emailed a letter to Indiana University law professor Jody Lyneé Madeira, the complainant, apologizing for not fully and clearly explaining its complex internal processes. They include “next steps” that can include a reopening a case too old for a standard-of-care probe, the board explained.

“We take your complaint and all complaints seriously,” it wrote in an unsigned letter.

On Sept. 16, though, the board’s staff had written Madeira saying, “Specifically, due to a recent change in the law, Texas Medical Board does not review complaints after seven years of the date of service. Therefore, no further action will be taken.”

The staff was referring to a 2011 law that says the board can’t pursue possible standard of care violations older than seven years for adult patients.

On Wednesday, the board told Madeira that it nevertheless can look into “violations that might apply beyond the standard of care.”

The board’s Disciplinary Process Review Committee, meeting on Oct. 17, decided not to dismiss Madeira’s complaint and “voted to re-open the matter,” the letter said.

“Other alleged violations being investigated in your complaint include unprofessional and unethical conduct,” it added. The next day, the full board approved the committee’s recommendation. The letter did not specify how many of the 19 members, all appointed by the governor, voted to keep the investigation going.

Late Wednesday, McMorries did not respond to a call to his medical office requesting comment.

He has acknowledged that in 1986, he treated Margo Williams, then of Center, now of Texarkana. With her late husband Doug Andrews, a high school teacher and tennis coach, Williams was having trouble having a baby. Williams and her husband selected a sperm donor from California. They turned to McMorries for help in administering the artificial insemination.

Despite five attempts, the California donor’s sample didn’t work.

McMorries then took a sperm sample of his own he’d kept from his days as a donor and medical resident nearly a decade earlier, and inserted it into Williams, he acknowledged earlier this year, in communications with Williams, her daughter Eve Andrews Wiley of Dallas and ABC’s 20/20. In May, the TV network aired an episode about Wiley’s push to make fertility fraud a crime in Texas.

McMorries insisted that before using his own sperm, he first obtained Williams’ permission to combine sperm from a local donor in East Texas with the California sample. Williams, though, adamantly denied he consulted with her before using local sperm – his own.

From the beginning of her consultations with McMorries, she told ABC, “I told him I didn’t want a local donor.”