Very good question. That’s a bit fishy. My only guess is that she may have gotten a settlement after her ‘back injury*’ and blew it all on the pregnancies. She also had extensive plastic surgery as well, after all.
ETA- Or what Chief Pedant said. :smack:
*-I put the quotes in there not because I think back problems are a scam diagnoses (my dad was out for nearly a year after an injury). I added them because, frankly, I have trouble trusting a person like this woman.
Nothing spectacular to add but. I just read the Wikipedia article on Suleman and what’s currently written about the octuplets. What angered/upset me more than her life choices up to now, was finding out that she graduated from the same high school I attended in the early 1990s. It’s nowhere near a model school with a great image but geez! Sigh… 
She hopes to sell her story for 2 million. It has not happened yet.
There are claims she has had extensive plastic surgery. Her pictures of a few years ago do not match.
Seriously, how far will $2 million go in caring for 14 freaking kids? I’m sure the hospital bill for their birth and on-going care will go way past that.
If she gets any donations on her website, the hospital should have first dibs, to get back what is owed to them.
What is $2 million after taxes?
Each time the figure comes up in conversation it is discussed as being the full 2 million, when it would really be significantly less- right?
Not to mention the fact that, at this point, it is only a theoretical $2 million. I haven’t seen a report yet that any such deal has gone through- only that she wants to sell the story for that much. Kinda like, “Hey, it’s o.k. for me to jump out of this airplane because I want god to grant me the power of flight.”
This is no longer a feel-good story and as such, I suspect its worth is substantially diminished. It’s just as likely an unauthorized (uncompensated) investigative story would make the rounds as the principal narrative. But I wouldn’t pretend to understand the business model for magazines who pay for their stories, so perhaps I’ll be surprised.
$2 million dollars properly invested after taxes is plenty of money to raise 14 children. How much the post-tax value is depends on how the payment is structured.
According to a story in today’s paper, the doctor arranged for a 49 year old woman to deliver quadruplets.
If I were any of his successful patients, I would insist on a DNA test. I think the doctor might be spreading his seed.
Do you have an online version of that story? I admit being interested in reading about a doctor who has no business in the profession. And out of curiosity, why do you think he’s screwing around?
Not screwing around, but using his semen for all these bizarre in-vitro cases. Does he have a “personal” stake in all this?
Maybe I’ve been watching too many soap operas.
That’s an interesting angle. He does seem like a pretty creepy guy… But I’ll stick with the safe bet that he’s a quack that wants his 15 minutes. Its better for preserving my sanity. 
Here you go. It seems that he’s not only implanting huge numbers of embryos into young healthy women like the Octomom, but also has done this with a 49-year old patient, resulting in a quad pregnancy that she’s attempting to carry to term. She’s already on bedrest in the hospital, partly because of the risk to the babies and partly because she’s at high risk for massive cardiovascular event, and it’s only five months in. Oh, and she doesn’t have any insurance, either.
This guy seems to be a real nimrod.
As a WAG, I’d say she threw that in because you do sometimes hear about fertility doctors using their own sperm to fertilize eggs for IVF without telling the patient. There’s not much point to it if you’re dealing solely with female infertility issues, other than I suppose the possible ego-boost of having tons of your spawn running about, but it makes a certain amount of sense if you’re dealing with male infertility or low fertility from both partners.
If you replace a sperm sample that has low motility or whatever other issues with one that you know is normal, your chances of success go WAY up. But donor samples cost money. Not a lot, but some. And they’re tracked with paperwork, so samples just disappearing causes problems. Guess where a guy can get a donor sample with no paperwork attached to it and doesn’t cost him anything but a sample cup?
So you’ve got this cheap easy way to really drive up your success rate…and that’s the name of the game, advertising-wise. I mean, if you were dealing with infertility and had to choose a doctor, and one had a higher success rate at dealing with your specific issue, which would you choose? Given how much this stuff costs, you’d want the guy with the higher success rate, right? And you get those people who other doctors told they would probably never have a kid, and you got them pregnant in one or two cycles, telling everyone who will listen what a miracle worker you are. And if any of their friends or relatives or coworkers has fertility issues, guess who’s going to get recommended?
The only comforting bit is that the California Medical Board is already looking at the guy.
The no-insurance angle in both cases is a bit weird. Idle speculation, but maybe the guy was working pro bono (perhaps in more ways than one) to drum up publicity. I think I’ve got my dose of weird for today, thank you. 
This all sounds like an episode of Law & Order SVU. ChungChung.
Part of me thinks she thought this would have turned out like the other octuplet pregnancy a few years ago; college scholarships, free diapers, tons of good press and a steady stream of lovely heart warming letters.
In the Duggars’ case, though, their kids have been spread out-they didn’t have them all at once, and they have sort of a “buddy system”, where the kids help out and take care of their younger sibs. Plus, they seem to care more about their own kids, than just themselves. (In their case, it’s a religious thing). AND I don’t think she went and had 8 kids at once-through IVF- while on welfare while she already had six.
Octo-Mom only seems addicted to having babies, not actually caring about the kids.
Think of all the deductions she’ll get for having dependents! 
I heard the same thing. I’m interested to hear what comes of his medical review. Part of me would like to invitro 8 Komodo dragon eggs up his ass.