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‘I slept with my half-sibling’: Woman’s horror story reflects loosely regulated nature of US fertility industry
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of CNN News
Posted: February 19th, 2024
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/14/us/fertility-fraud-accidental...
Victoria Hill never quite understood how she could be so different from her father – in looks and in temperament. Worried about a health issue, and puzzled because neither of her parents had suffered any of the symptoms, Hill purchased a DNA testing kit from 23andMe a few years ago and sent her DNA to the genomics company. What should have been a routine quest to learn more about herself turned into a shocking revelation that she had many more siblings than just the brother she grew up with – the count now stands at 22. Some of them reached out to her and dropped more bombshells: Hill’s biological father was not the man she grew up with but a fertility doctor who had been helping her mother conceive using donated sperm. That doctor, Burton Caldwell, a sibling told her, had used his own sperm to inseminate her mother, allegedly without her consent. Hill’s story appears to represent one of the most extreme cases to date of fertility fraud in which fertility doctors have misled their female patients and their families by secretly using their own sperm instead of that of a donor. A CNN investigation into fertility fraud nationwide found that most states, including Connecticut, have no laws against it. More than 30 doctors around the country have been caught or accused of covertly using their own sperm to impregnate their patients, CNN has confirmed; advocates say they know of at least 80. No doctors have yet been criminally charged for the behavior.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse by doctors from reliable major media sources.