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When women came to Dr. Marvin Yussman for IVF treatment, they were told that they were being given sperm from ‘medical students’ – but sometimes, he says, ‘they didn’t turn up.
A fertility expert who used his own sperm in IVF procedures has been allowed to keep his licence to practise despite several complaints.
Dr. Marvin Yussman, from the University of Louisville School of Medicine, said that he “exclusively” used medical student donors.
However when Kentucky woman Susan Crowder visited his clinic for an IVF consultation in the 1970s she was unwittingly implanted with an egg that had been fertilised with Dr. Yussman’s sperm.
She only discovered the truth ears later through a DNA test.
It’s an issue that has become so widespread that it’s now got its own name – fertility fraud.
Earlier this year a doctor at a fertility clinic has agreed to a R154 398 000,00 million payout after DNA tests showed he had used his own sperm to fertilise at least 17 women without their knowledge.
In Dr. Yussman’s case the University of Louisville stated that the sperm substitutions “while not illegal at the time … were not a practice we would condone then or now.”
During discussions with the hospital’s medical board, Dr Yussman admitted he had used his own sperm to inseminate Ms Crowder and “only about a half dozen” other women.
“On very rare occasions when the donor did not show and no frozen specimen was available, I used my own sperm,” he said.
Jody Madeira, a professor at the Indiana University-Bloomington law school, told the Daily Beast: “I was astonished at what the university had said; about what the doctor had said in his statement; about what the medical board had said.”
She said the hospital had paid no attention to Ms Crowder’s feelings.
Ms Crowder likened the sperm substitution to a sexual assault, rejecting the suggestion that she should be grateful that the procedure brought her daughter into the world.
“I don’t understand that argument,”she said.
“That’s not the point. Any rape victim wouldn’t be told that.”
The medical board has recommended that a “letter of concern” should be sent to Dr. Yussman, who is reportedly on the brink of retirement anyway, but he has been allowed to retain his medical licence.