Fertility fraud

Fertility fraud is the failure on the part of a fertility doctor to obtain consent from a patient before inseminating her with his own sperm. This normally occurs in the context of people using assisted reproductive technology (ART) to address fertility issues.

The term is also used in cases where donor eggs are used without consent[1] and more broadly, to instances where doctors and other medical professionals exploit opportunities that arise when people use assisted reproductive technology (ART) to address fertility issues. This may give rise to a number of different types of fraud involving insurance, unnecessary procedures, theft of eggs, and other issues related to fertility treatment.[2]

Types

Although the main sense of fertility fraud is non-consensual insemination of a patient by her doctor,[3][4] there are many other types of fertility fraud, and it can take place at various stages of fertilization:

  • Competing for patients via misleading information about success rates, either in advertising or during personal interviews[2]
  • Performing an ART procedure not covered by insurance, and then billing for a different procedure[2]
  • Performing unnecessary or futile procedures on patients who are misinformed or poorly informed[2]
  • False claims of pregnancy, followed by assertions of fetal death[2]
  • Misuse of sperm, eggs, and embryos, in particular, a health care person substituting their own sperm for donor sperm[2][4]
  • Inadequate screening of donors[5]
  • Embezzlement from sperm banks, or theft of human eggs ("egg-snatching") or embryos, or use of eggs without consent[1]

Egg theft

One of the earliest cases involved egg theft occurred in 1987 at Garden Grove California, in a clinic run by Doctor Ricardo Asch. Asch took eggs from women undergoing diagnostic procedures and used them in fertility procedures in other women. An estimated 67 women were victims of egg or embryo theft.[6]

Doctor Ricardo Asch along with two partners were accused of taking eggs and embryos from patients without their consent, and using them to cause pregnancies in other women, along with defrauding insurance companies. Thirty-five patients filed legal actions against him.[7]

Insemination fraud

There have been numerous cases of a health care provider fraudulently substituting their own sperm for donor sperm, resulting in pregnancy and birth.[4]

The first "test tube baby" was facilitated by Robert Edwards in 1978, and he allegedly used eggs without the consent of the women involved.[1]

In 1980s in Virginia, at least seven instances were identified in which fertility doctor Cecil Jacobson was the biological father of his patients' children, including one patient who was supposed to have been inseminated with sperm provided by her husband. DNA tests linked Jacobson to at least 15 such children, and it has been suspected that he fathered as many as 75 children by impregnating patients with his own sperm.[8]

Donald Cline used his own sperm in his fertility practice in Indianapolis the 1970s and 1980s to father dozens of children. This came to light in 2014, when home DNA test kits were proliferating, and led to the discovery of Cline having used his own sperm to fertilize his patients' eggs. Because there was no law concerning the practice in Indiana, he was charged with obstruction of justice, false advertising, and immoral conduct, and lost his license to practice medicine. The first law in the United States came into effect in 2019 in the State of Indiana as a result of this case. Similar cases were found in other states, including one doctor in Virginia who fathered 75 children, but he couldn't be prosecuted because no law existed in Virginia prohibiting it.[9][10]

In the United States, medical students in the 1960s and 1970s donated sperm, and later while trying to develop their practice as a physician, may have gone on to use their own sperm in order to establish a track record of success. There were no laws on the books at the time prohibiting such activity.[11]

Hundreds of children have been fathered by non-consensual insemination worldwide by their physician, including in the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands, but without specific laws outlawing it, the legal consequences are unclear. Sometimes other laws related to the fertility fraud are used against the physician, such as mail, travel, or wire fraud, while others face civil suits. Some physicians have faced ethics charges by the governing bodies of their profession and lost their license to practice medicine.[4]

Activists have pushed for legislation that would make fertility fraud a crime, and as of February 2022, seven U.S. states have passed laws, and seven others were considering it.[11]

Scope

In the United States, over fifty fertility doctors have been accused of fraud in connection with donating sperm.[11]

See also

References

Works cited

  • Ariana Eunjung Cha (22 November 2018). "Fertility fraud: People conceived through errors, misdeeds in the industry are pressing for justice". Washington Post. Retrieved 1 March 2022.
  • Fox, Dov; Cohen, I. Glenn; Adashi, Eli Y. (November 2019). "Fertility Fraud, Legal Firsts, and Medical Ethics". Obstetrics & Gynecology. 134 (5): 918–920. doi:10.1097/AOG.0000000000003516.
  • Lemmens, Trudo; Jennifer Bergman; Kanksha Mahadevia Ghimire; Maryam Shahid (20 December 2020). Medical Law in Canada (2 ed.). Kluwer Law International B.V. ISBN 9789403529615. OCLC 1231653350.
  • Marquis, Julie (16 November 1995). "Fertility Clinic Doctor Denies Charges on TV : Embryos: Asch says U.S. society is obsessed with genes, and he expresses doubts that accusers were all his patients at UCI". LA Times. Retrieved 1 March 2022.
  • McCuen, Marnie (2000). McCuen, Marnie (ed.). Redesigning Creation: Debating the Biotech Revolution. G.E. McCuen Publications. ISBN 978-0-86596-185-2. OCLC 421985213. At the University of California at Irvine , over 75 couples were affected by theft of eggs and embryos at the University clinic where Dr. Ricardo Asch had apparently been secretly selling some of the eggs extracted from his infertility
  • Mroz, Jacqueline (28 February 2022). "When an Ancestry Search Reveals Fertility Fraud". New York Times. Retrieved 1 March 2022.
  • Nelson, Rick (1994). The Babymaker: Fertility Fraud and the Fall of Dr. Cecil Jacobson. Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0-553-56162-3. OCLC 31487163.
  • "Doctor Is Found Guilty in Fertility Case". The New York Times. 1992-03-05. p. 14.
  • Salinger, Lawrence M., ed. (14 June 2013). Encyclopedia of White-Collar and Corporate Crime, Volume 1 (2 ed.). SAGE Publications. pp. 332–. ISBN 978-1-4522-7616-8. OCLC 1043479471.
  • Weisberg, D. Kelly (2 February 2020). Modern Family Law: Cases and Materials (7 ed.). Wolters Kluwer Law & Business. pp. 771–. ISBN 978-1-5438-0459-1. OCLC 1140372724.

Further reading

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