Dr Merle Berger told patient Sarah Depoian sperm had come from an anonymous donor, new lawsuit claims

Dr Merle Berger told patient Sarah Depoian sperm had come from an anonymous donor, new lawsuit claims

A leading Boston-based fertility doctor secretly impregnated a patient with his own sperm despite telling her that it had come from an anonymous donor, new a lawsuit has claimed.

According to a civil claim filed in US district court in Boston on Wednesday, Dr Merle Berger, founder of Boston IVF and a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Harvard medical school for over three decades, secretly impregnated a patient, Sarah Depoian, who had been seeking intrauterine insemination.

According to the claim, Berger told Depoian the sperm would come from an anonymous sperm donor “who resembled her husband, who did not know her, and whom she did not know”.

“This is an extreme violation. I am still struggling to process it. I trusted Dr Berger fully. We thought he would act responsibly and ethically,” Depoian said in a statement released by her attorneys.

    • Pennomi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      35·
      11 months ago

      There was a serial case like this that happened decades ago and was only uncovered due to the fact that gene sequencing is so easy to access these days. Apparently now the 100+ children have this weird chat group of all the half siblings. I know because my friend was one of the babies.

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
      154·
      11 months ago

      There is like one case a year of this happening. Use a fertility clinic staffed by women. No woman is going to go through the process of doing something similar.

      • TheMauveAvenger@lemmy.world
        242·
        11 months ago

        Wasn’t there an article a year or two ago of a teacher serving people baked goods made with her SO’s semen? Crazy doesn’t recognize the boundaries of sex and gender.

        • SeaJ@lemm.ee
          8·
          11 months ago

          More I mean a woman is not very likely to harvest her own eggs. And I still feel like a doctor stealing her SO’s semen to implant into eggs is much less probable than a male doctor simply doing it himself. In fact we know it is less likely because cases like this article are an annual occurrence whereas I have never heard of a female fertility doctor using her SO’s semen. Yes, crazy doesn’t recognize the boundaries of sex but one requires several more steps than the other which ups the chances of getting caught.

          I cannot find a single insurance of a woman doing that compared to the dozens of cases that I can find men doing it.

        • asteriskeverything@lemmy.world
          64·
          11 months ago

          Yeah but like… statistically it kind of does though? Or do we also have multiple cases where women forced sperm on unsuspecting people the same way these doctors who betrayed their patients in the most base, horrific way seem to pop up every year??