In a shocking lawsuit filed in the US District Court in Boston, a fertility doctor and founder of Boston IVF is accused of secretly impregnating a patient with his sperm in 1980. The daughter of the patient filed this lawsuit against the doctor on Wednesday.
Dr. Merle Berger was a former professor at Harvard Medical School and the founder of one of the nation’s largest fertility clinics. Ms. Carolyn Bester is the woman who filed the lawsuit against the retired doctor.
Sarah Depoian, a 73-year-old woman, went to the doctor's clinic in 1980. She and her husband first visited Dr. Berger to discuss intrauterine insemination. Depoian said the doctor told her the sperm would come from an anonymous donor. As a result of insemination, Depoian got pregnant, and Carolyn Bester was born in January 1981. But Ms. Depoian accused the doctor of using his own sperm to impregnate her. Due to a deep curiosity about her biological father, Carolyn conducted a home DNA test using DNA kits from Ancestry.com and 23andMe. She was taken aback by the test results, which revealed that Dr. Berger is her biological father, according to the lawsuit
Depoian’s attorney, Adam Wolf, said that Dr. Berger knew what he was doing was wrong. He also told the reporters that Dr. Berger did so without her consent and against her wishes. Some people call this horrific act ‘medical rape’. But regardless of what you call it, Dr. Berger's heinous and intentional misconduct is unethical, unacceptable, and unlawful.
In the lawsuit, Depoian is in part seeking damages in an amount sufficient to compensate her for her injuries.
Depoian, who lives in Maine, said that they fully trusted Dr. Berger. He was a medical professional. It's hard to imagine not trusting your doctor. They never dreamed he would abuse his position of trust and perpetrate this extreme violation. She is struggling to process it.
On the other hand, Dr. Merle Berger’s lawyer, Ian Pinta, claimed he was a prominent figure in the medical fertility field, and he helped thousands of families fulfil their dream of having children. Reacting to the lawsuit releases, a statement on his behalf stated, "The allegations concern events from over 40 years ago, in the early days of artificial insemination. At a time before sperm banks and IVF, it was dramatically different from modern-day fertility treatment. The allegations, which have changed repeatedly in the six months since the plaintiff's attorney first contacted Dr. Berger, have no legal or factual merit and will be disproven in court."
This is not the only one; there have been several other instances of fertility doctors being accused of using their own sperm to impregnate a patient.
(Input from various media sources)
(Rehash/Komal Bhoi)
