A former fertility specialist has been accused of using his own sperm to impregnate his patients on more than 50 occasions.
It is alleged the 77-year-old doctor from the US state of Indianapolis repeatedly replaced donor sperm with his own and may have fathered up to eight children over two decades, according to court documents.
Dr. Donald Cline pleaded not guilty to two felony charges, for obstructing the cause of justice, when he appeared in court on Monday, CBS News reports.
Several adults from the town of Zionsville had realised they shared DNA – and maybe a father – after tracing their genealogy back to the same donor from the same fertility clinic in the 1970s, according to a probable cause affidavit,
Cline “said he used his own sperm whenever he didn’t have a donor sample available,” he apparently told them.
Reportedly, he also claimed “felt that he was helping women because they really wanted a baby.”
When the state began investigating the complaints, however, Cline denied the actions.
“I can emphatically say that at no time did I ever use my own sample for insemination,” he said in a letter to the Indiana Attorney General’s Office.
He retired in 2009.
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It wasn't an uncommon event back in the day...
Here is the main guy...
Bertold Paul Wiesner (1901–1972) was an Austrian Jewish physiologist noted for his contribution to research into human fertility and the diagnosis of pregnancy, and for being biological father to an estimated 600 offspring by anonymously donating sperm used by his wife the obstetrician Mary Barton to perform artificial insemination on women at a private clinic on Harley Street.
During the early 1940s, Barton founded the first private clinic offering artificial insemination in the United Kingdom. In 1945, Barton collaborated with Wiesner and Kenneth Walker on a paper for the British Medical Journal, describing their technique of human artificial insemination. The paper precipitated highly publicised condemnation from the Pope who called it a sin, and the Archbishop of Canterbury who called for the British parliament to make human artificial insemination illegal. Although it was not criminalized it was not legalised either and therefore the status of artificial insemination was ambiguous. Consequently, the activities of Barton and Wiesner at the fertility clinic were conducted in secrecy and all inseminated women were instructed to tell nobody about it.
The IVF Specialists in Australia freely admit to being sperm donors. Who knows if something similar hasn't happened here?