A Boston-based doctor has been sued by a former patient, who discovered that he impregnated her using his own sperm when she was going through intrauterine insemination (IUI) decades ago.
Dr. Merle Berger was treating Sarah Depoian in the 1980s when she and her husband were struggling with infertility. IUI is a process in which a sperm sample is first washed — keeping the healthy sperm and getting rid of the lower-quality sperm — and then inserted directly into the patient’s uterus. In Depoian’s case, she had consented to using an anonymous sperm donor, according to a statement released by her attorneys. She was told that the sperm donor was “a medical resident who resembled her husband, who did not know her, and whom she did not know.”
The couple’s daughter, Carolyn Bester, was conceived successfully and the family had no idea what Berger had done — until Bester took at-home DNA tests from Ancestry.com and 23andMe to find out more information about her family history. While she did not get a result for her biological father, she did find that she was related to Berger’s granddaughter and second cousin. When she told her mother the results, the family was horrified.
READ: Christian writer expresses regret over choosing IVF: ‘I’m not God and I was playing Him’
“This is an extreme violation,” Depoian said in a statement. “I am still struggling to process it. I trusted Dr. Berger fully. We thought he would act responsibly and ethically. I will never fully recover from his violation of me.”
Bester agreed, saying that she was shocked when she saw the results. “It feels like reality has shifted,” she said. “I just want to say how proud I am of my mom for speaking out, and I’m honored to stand by her side.”
Adam Wolf, one of the attorneys representing the Depoian family, called the violation an act of “medical rape” in his statement. “Dr. Berger secretly inserted his own sperm into his patient, Sarah Depoian. He did so without her consent and against her wishes,” he said, adding, “[R]egardless of what you choose to call it, Berger’s heinous and intentional misconduct is unethical, unacceptable, and illegal.”
Berger, through his legal team, has denied the allegations against him.
Boston IVF, a fertility company with clinics in six states, is one of the country’s largest; it was founded in 1986 by Berger, who seemingly has done well for himself since then. The Boston Globe reported that he has two homes — one in Boston and one in Martha’s Vineyard — and trained residents at Harvard Medical School for decades.
With the rise of both artificial reproductive technology (ART) and at-home DNA tests, it is increasingly becoming clear just how common an occurrence this is. Two doctors alone have been linked to 75 children; another gynecologist was found to have fathered 21 children. Yet another doctor, based out of Detroit, impregnated hundreds of women using his own sperm.
