OTHER DONOR SCANDALS

A woman in Indiana in the US took a DNA test to determine her paternity and discovered she was related to eight unknown siblings. When she investigated she learnt her biological father was her mother’s fertility doctor. Dr Donald Cline (77) had told his patients he was inseminating them with “fresh sperm” from a medical student or resident.

According to court documents he initially said he’d used his own sperm around 50 times, although he later denied it. The case is ongoing. Sperm bank Xytex Corp, based in Georgia in the US, is being sued by parents of donor-conceived babies after it was discovered that one of the donors was a mentally ill convicted criminal.

The company advertised donor 9623 as a dream biological dad, boasting a high IQ and impressive professional accomplishments, even claiming he was a PhD candidate in neuroscience engineering.

After his sperm was used to produce 36 children, one client accidentally stumbled across the donor’s true identity. The claimants allege the man has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, narcissistic personality disorder and grandiose delusions. They also allege the 39-year-old had an eight-month stint in jail for burglary in 2005. DNA tests were conducted on 18 people conceived at a London fertility clinic between 1943 and 1962. The results showed two-thirds of them were fathered by the clinic’s late founder, Bertold Wiesner.

Extrapolating this to the rest of the children conceived at the clinic, experts believe Wiesner fathered between 300 and 600 children.

Wiesner and his wife, Mary Barton, founded the clinic in the British capital and helped in the conception of 1 500 babies.