A LEADING fertility expert is being sued for allegedly making ''secret profits'' from his pioneering work.
Dr Simon Fishel is accused of earning enormous sums abroad - where patients are prepared to pay more than #20,000 to conceive - instead of focusing on his work at a non-profit-making university re-search centre.
He is also accused of setting secret passwords to stop colleagues at Nottingham University, where he worked until he quit in April, from accessing key computer files.
Now the university has issued a High Court writ against 43-year-old Dr Fishel, who was part of the Cambridge team behind the world's first test-tube baby, Louise Brown.
The university, which issued the writ on Wednesday, is seeking damages for breach of contract.
The move follows Dr Fishel's announcement that he was leaving Nottingham University's Nurture unit, which provides fertility treatment on the NHS, to establish his own centre at a private Nottingham hospital.
Several other team members, including medical director Dr Simon Thornton and chief lecturer Ken Dowell, said they would follow him to the new clinic, at the BMI Park Hospital.
Shortly afterwards the university launched an internal inquiry into the flurry of departures and Dr Fishel was or-dered off campus, although he still had three months of his contract left to run, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday.
Officials interviewed members of Dr Fishel's team and re-moved computer equipment and software from his #250,000 luxury home in one of Nottingham's wealthiest suburbs.
They then issued the writ, alleging that during his six years at Nurture Dr Fishel did unauthorised and highly lucrative private work in countries including Italy, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, South Africa, and the United States.
He is also alleged to have encouraged other members of staff to break their contracts.
The university is also seeking an injunction ordering Dr Fishel to reveal the secret password locking his computer files, and to prevent him from removing, altering, or destroying them.
The writ demands that he should produce records detailing all the private work he carried out while a member of the university staff to ''account for money received, and for secret profits and for sums earned in breach of contract''.
It is also seeking a court order to force Dr Fishel to repay all sums disclosed by the writ.
Dr Fishel is no stranger to controversy, having worked in Rome with maverick Italian Dr Severino Antinori, who came under international attack after he helped a 59-year-old British woman to have twins.
But Dr Fishel is believed to be furious at his former em-ployer's actions as he feels that his work has brought the university attention and kudos.
It was Dr Fishel's ground-breaking research that made possible the birth last year of Susan Louise Oxburgh after her father Gavin was pronounced infertile.
The birth broke all previous medical tenets.
Dr Fishel's breakthrough technique, now banned under new restrictions on embryo re-search, used immature sperm cells taken from the father to fertilise an egg from the mother.
Dr Fishel's team was also the first in Britain successfully to inject a single sperm into a mother's egg, helping thousands of infertile men father children.
Yesterday the university confirmed it had issued the writ after the internal inquiry ''revealed private work being undertaken by Dr Fishel without permission from the university''.
Dr Fishel was not available to comment yesterday.
But the Mail on Sunday quoted a statement he issued through his lawyers to reject the allegations.
Dr Fishel said in the statement: ''I strongly deny that I breached my contract or that I induced others to do so.
''Any external activities were carried out with the ap-proval of my superiors and my external work was greatly beneficial to the institution.''
He added: ''I have dedicated my life to helping infertile couples.''
The Park Hospital, where Dr Fishel's new clinic is based, said: ''Any writ that may have been issued by the University of Nottingham against Dr Fishel will be a private matter for the university and Dr Fishel.''
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