A Lawsuit Claims an IVF Doctor Secretly Used His Own Sperm to Inseminate Patient
By CNN
More than 40 years after a couple sought the help of a Boston, Massachusetts, fertility specialist, their daughter discovered through a purchased DNA kit that the doctor is her biological father, according to a lawsuit filed on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court District of Massachusetts.
The suit alleges Dr. Merle Berger secretly used his own sperm to inseminate the mother, Sarah Depoian, in 1980. “This is an extreme violation,” Depoian said in a statement released by her attorney, Adam Wolf. “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.”
At the time, Depoian was told by Dr. Berger that the sperm used in the insemination would be from a medical resident “who resembled her husband” and “whom she did not know,” according to the complaint. But instead, Dr. Berger used his own sperm to inseminate Depoian, the complaint alleges.
Depoian’s daughter Carolyn found out Dr. Berger was her father after she purchased DNA kits from Ancestry.com and 23andMe last year. The results showed that she was related to Dr. Berger’s granddaughter and Dr. Berger’s second cousin, according to the lawsuit. She later pieced it all together after talking to “one of her newfound relatives,” the complaint alleged. “To say I experienced shock when I figured this out would be an extreme understatement,” Carolyn said in a statement. “It feels like reality has shifted. I just want to say how proud I am of my mom for speaking out, and I’m honored to stand by her side.”
After learning what had happened, Depoian reached out through her attorney to Dr. Berger, who denied the allegations. CNN affiliate WCVB obtained a statement from Berger’s legal team denying the allegations. “Dr. Merle Berger was a pioneer in the medical fertility field who in 50 years of practice helped thousands of families fulfill their dreams of having a child,” according to the statement. “He is widely known for his sensitivity to the emotional anguish of the women who came to him for help conceiving.”
Boston IVF, where Dr. Berger was named before his retirement in 2020, released a statement saying that the incident happened before they existed, and that the field of reproductive endocrinology and infertility is much different than it was decades ago, with rigorous ethical and medical standards in place.
The field continues to uphold the most rigorous ethical and medical standards. Dr. Berger retired in 2020.
CNN has reached out to Dr. Berger for comment but has yet to hear back.