A survey conducted in the Netherlands found that between the 1970s and 1980s, Dutch gynecologist Jos Beck used his sperm to make dozens of pregnant women who came to him for help with reproductive treatments. DNA tests showed that Beck, who died in 2019, was the biological father of at least 21 girls and boys who conceived with his sperm without the knowledge of the women treated at the hospital where he worked and who gave birth to them. . However, it is suspected that there may be more people conceived with Beck’s sperm, and in the past it has been discovered by other doctors and gynecologists who have done the same, both in the Netherlands and other countries.
Between 1973 and 1998 Beck worked at Leiderdorp Hospital, a few kilometers north of The Hague, and was later incorporated into the Rhein Hospital. During that time, he had treated dozens of couples who were unable to have children and turned to him for cycles Heterogeneous Fertilization, a procedure in which a donor’s sperm is used to fertilize eggs and then the embryo is implanted into her uterus to start a pregnancy. The donor often remains anonymous, and it is also possible to implant the donated eggs into the uterus and fertilize them with donated sperm, which in turn are donated.
Rina Hospital last January commissioned An independent investigation based on requests from the FIOM organization, which is responsible for tracking the biological parents of people who were conceived and born thanks to assisted reproduction, and in 2021 conducted some DNA tests. The tests found traces of Beck’s DNA compatible with 21 people whose mothers had been treated between 1973 and 1986, presumably without anyone in the hospital knowing what he was doing.
The Netherlands is among the most advanced European countries in the field of sperm donation and assisted reproductive technologies. However, the hospital board said that in the years Beck worked in Leiderdorp, IVF techniques were still being developed, and there was very little regulation in the sector. The doctor used his own sperm to fertilize other women, and thus he was the factor. biological. Others’ father.
The hospital explained in a statement that the medical records of those contracts no longer exist, and therefore required people who were born thanks to assisted reproductive treatments performed at that hospital at that time – and those over 16 years of age – the right to know an individual’s biological parents under the 2004 law – to advance.
Beck is not the only doctor who has used his own sperm for IVF without the knowledge of his patients. Thanks to DNA tests in 2020, it was discovered that Dutch gynecologist Jan Wildschut, who died in 2009, had used his own sperm to get pregnant. At least 17 women who were treated in the clinics where he worked. But in 2017, an investigation was launched that suspected him of the same behavior Jan Karbatdirector of two clinics in the Rotterdam area between 1964 and 2009, who later turned out to be the biological father of at least 75 boys and girls. Some doctors who have done the same in both the United States and Canada, also since the 1970s, have been or are biological parents to dozens of other people.
In 2021, Canadian doctor Norman Barwin He accepts To pay 13 million Canadian dollars (about 9 million euros) to compensate hundreds of families who have given birth with treatments using the wrong sperm, in 17 cases of his own.
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