During the past decade one institution in Orange County, California has received a great deal of unwanted media attention. That attention has focused on a number of different scandals, all of which have affected at least some of the residents of Orange County, California.

The institution that has been targeted by media scrutiny is the University of California at Irvine (UCI). The University's biggest scandals have all involved the Medical School and the University Hospital. The scandals have intruded on the rights of large numbers of people who reside in Orange County, California. An article in the Los Angeles Times has indicated that those scandals demonstrated a "failure of leadership." The Times has documented ten years of such failings.

Following the publication of the Times' report, residents of Orange County, California joined residents of Los Angeles County in expressing shock at the scandalous behavior exhibited by officials at UCI. Their expressions of shock were first heard in 1995. In May of that year the public learned that certain fertility doctors at UCI had been stealing patients' eggs. Eggs that had been obtained from one woman had been placed into the body of a different woman.

In the late 1990s it became clear that the UCI administration had failed to design a new and more effective mechanism for the delivery of quality patient care. For example, one UCI doctor had been using patients' blood for research purposes, without getting the patients' needed consent. Moreover, members of UCI's Willed Body Program had been charged with selling body parts.

Later reports indicated that the public outcry, coming from both Orange, Calif. and from more distant locations, had failed to hold-off the occurrence of yet more scandals. Hence, in February of 2006 another UCI scandal had spread throughout all of Orange County, California. The news of that scandal had enraged many residents of Orange County, California, especially those who had used or hoped to use the UCI liver transplant program.

According to the latest report in the L.A. Times more than thirty patients had died in 2004 and 2005 while awaiting a liver transplant. Tragically the deaths of those patients could have been avoided. Livers had been available, but the UCI Hospital had turned them down.

According to the same Times article, the rejection of the livers resulted from UCI's failure to find and hire a new full-time transplant surgeon. UCI had intentionally kept secret from residents, both in Orange, Calif. and in other southern California cities, its failure to replace Dr. Sean Cao, the former transplant surgeon. By November of 2005 the UCI liver transplant program had been forced to close.

UCI had tried to bring to the residents of Orange County, California the latest and most advanced medical procedures. By trying to deliver those procedures in a most expedient manner, UCI had failed to assure its patients the needed quality of care.  That failure had created a string of scandals.