r/offbeat 22h ago

Fertility Doctor Accused of Secretly Fathering Patient's Son With His Own Sperm in Bombshell Lawsuit

https://radaronline.com/p/fertility-doctor-accused-secretly-fathering-patients-son/
626 Upvotes

37 comments sorted by

144

u/AFewBerries 22h ago

I've definitely heard of this happening before 

19

u/approvedbyinspector5 17h ago

Also the documentary "Our Father".

ETA: I realized someone had already posted a link about the doctor in that documentary. Leaving the post in case anyone wants to see it.

21

u/Corvus84 21h ago

It was a Law & Order episode.

61

u/Pcat0 21h ago edited 21h ago

No that law & order episode was based off of real life. This has happened a number of times

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Cline

23

u/Corvus84 21h ago

Every Law & Order episode (especially from the older seasons) is "based off of real life". It's just how many people encounter what used to be called a "human interest" story in some form, and I was suggesting how someone might have encountered this before, not asserting that's exactly where they encountered it.

3

u/AFewBerries 19h ago

I never saw Law & Order

2

u/peachesfordinner 17h ago

An x files episode as well. The babies all had tails

4

u/HalfLifeMusic 21h ago

Life imitates art

4

u/MF_Kitten 5h ago

A whole bunch of doctors have done this over the years.

85

u/AutumnMama 21h ago

WHY ARE THEY ALWAYS DOING THIS

57

u/miss_taken_identity 21h ago

Same reason there are a not an insignificant amount of firefighters charged with arson.

Edit: missed a word

41

u/geodebug 20h ago

Indeed, a problem with arson vs a problem with “our son”.

15

u/ThunderCorg 20h ago

A scholarly observation

2

u/saintpetejackboy 16h ago

Wow! The meta got meta'd.

1

u/Back4DaVery1stTime 3h ago

Same with elementary teachers and...well ypu get it

12

u/madethisforroasting 14h ago

Psychopaths. It’s a sick fetus for them.

Edit: fetish.

-4

u/PeterNippelstein 18h ago

Well if you think about it its the nature of every animal to desire to have as many offspring as possible so they can pass on their genetics. Its like lizard brain instinct.

7

u/AutumnMama 10h ago

Well yeah but most people just do it the conventional way

27

u/PiDigitsOfPi 18h ago

Why though? I mean, of all the dumb things you can do that could possibly lead back to you, this one is by far the most obvious and conclusive.

23

u/shelchang 18h ago edited 22m ago

DNA ancestry sites weren't a thing in the 1980s. Even forensic DNA testing wasn't really a thing yet, it was still a new technology during the OJ Simpson trial in the mid 1990s. The fertility doctors who pulled stuff like this in the 70s and 80s simply thought they'd never get found out.

35

u/Obi-Brawn-Kenobi 22h ago

How did they determine DNA relationship to the doc? Was it just the ancestry website? I guess if it's true it could have technically been a son or nephew of the doc, not that that would be much better

If the allegations turn out to be true, why would a doctor serially sneaking his own sperm into his patients sign up for ancestry.com? Seems like he could've thought that one out better.

Never hear of this website but this was one vague, poorly substantiated, ad-infested article. Next time try posting a real news site

33

u/Lord_Unico 21h ago

Usually, they are found out by someone in their family finding up for ancestry websites.

24

u/SaintUlvemann 21h ago

...why would a doctor serially sneaking his own sperm into his patients sign up for ancestry.com?

Wouldn't have to be him himself. If a relative of the doctor's signs up for it, that could be enough to let an investigator connect the dots over time.

13

u/BuoyantBear 19h ago

I remember hearing years ago that only 15% of the the population's DNA needs to be in a database to be able to map the entire population.

Probably need even less with modern computation.

19

u/drunky_crowette 21h ago

My oldest sister found out who her bio-dad is because his sister had uploaded her DNA to Ancestry.com.

Apparently really threw my mom for a loop when my sister called her up and asked "who the fuck is (guy) and why does Ancestry say his sister is my aunt?"

Apparently he and mom dated briefly before she got with my dad.

2

u/Rehcraeser 19h ago

If it’s similar to the story I saw yesterday on here, the baby came out black when they ordered a white one

4

u/dantesgift 18h ago

I saw that episode on Bull

4

u/approvedbyinspector5 17h ago

Watch (or don't watch depending on how depressed you want to get) the documentary called "Our Father".

2

u/Forward-Amount-9961 20h ago

A tale as old as time.

1

u/A_N_T 17h ago

Offbeat is supposed to be weird stories like "Cat saves firefighter from tree" not this disgusting and horrifying shit

1

u/TheGameIsFizzbin 17h ago

I saw this Law and Order episode.

1

u/efrique 17h ago

With these cases, its never just one...

1

u/mudbot 13h ago

many such cases. example

2

u/aresef 2h ago edited 1h ago

There was a fertility doc named Donald Cline who, in the 1970s and 1980s, secretly used his own sperm to father 94 children. It didn’t come to light until 2014, when a woman using 23andMe or whatever found out she had at least eight half-siblings. She went to the Indiana attorney general, whose office interviewed this guy and they lied to him. So he was charged for that and got a one year suspended sentence. He’s since been taken to the cleaners in civil cases.

He normally wouldn’t have even been eligible to donate, since he has rheumatoid arthritis. Many of his children have auto-immune disorders. And many of them live near one another, so there was the possibility they or their children could’ve dated one another, and that presents a whole bunch of problems.

Indiana and other states have changed their laws to make what Cline did a crime going forward. There's a Netflix doc and a podcast about what he did.

-1

u/Unable-Plate7216 10h ago

Its super fucking commen, some fertility doctors were in epateins payroll

So........ lots of you supported that