A fertility doctor used his sperm to imbue more than 50 women | Chronic

A fertility doctor from Indiana (United States) used his own sperm to artificially inseminate his patients without her consent between the 1970s and 1980s, which has been confirmed to date as the father of the day. at least 50 children. many of them have only recently discovered who is their parent.

Heather Woock, one of the doctor's daughters Donald Cline, learned the truth after a stranger contacted her in August 2017 to tell him that he was his half-brother, she told L & # 39; Atlantic. Although, at first, the woman did not believe it, the messages continued to arrive, to which were added those of others claiming to be her half-brothers. They had all followed him on Facebook thanks to his user name on the web account. Ancestry.com, that Woock created when her husband gave her a DNA test so she knew where she was from.

The discovery

One of the first people to discover that Cline was his biological father Jacoba Ballard, who started looking for his half-brothers in 2014. When he found the first parents, they kept looking for the sperm donor until they finally found Cline. In 2016, they managed to meet the doctor, who admitted to using his own sperm to inseminate about 50 patients. As he told them, his medical record had been destroyed years ago.

The confession eventually led to a criminal investigation and Cline was accused of lying to the investigators. The retired physician, who is now 80 years old, was sentenced to one year in prison in December 2017. No further charges have been brought against him because the law of the Indiana does not specifically prohibit fertility doctors from using their own sperm.

So far, DNA testing of specialized services, such as 23 and me and Ancestry.com, confirmed that at least 50 children were born from Cline, the number being much larger if we take into account the number of people who have never been tested for DNA. Meanwhile, several Cline children stay in touch via a Facebook group.