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.

  • SeaJ@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    7 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
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      24
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      7 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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        edit-2
        7 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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        7 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??