A family has filed a lawsuit against an Ohio hospital after a doctor allegedly inseminated a woman with a stranger's sperm instead of her husband's -- a bombshell revelation that wasn't discovered until nearly 30 years later through a home DNA test.
"It took just one Christmas gift -- a home DNA test kit -- to change our lives forever. It revealed a trauma that I never could have imagined," Jeanine Harvey said in a statement.
The lawsuit explains that Jeanine and her husband John "Mike" Harvey went to the fertility center at Akron City Hospital, now known as Summa Health System, in 1991 seeking to have a child that was genetically related to them both. At the time, Dr. Nicholas Spirtos was serving as Chief of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility and In Vitro Fertilization/Embryo Transfer.
In 1992, the Harveys celebrated the birth of their daughter, Jessica. What they didn't know at the time, according to the lawsuit, was that the insemination procedure had been botched.
The Harveys had no reason to think that Jessica wasn't Mike's biological daughter -- until she took a home DNA test in late 2020. It was a moment that would change everything.
"My husband and I were planning a trip to Europe. How cool, we thought, would it be to learn if we had family in the countries we'd be visiting. Maybe we could connect with our distant relatives," Jessica said. "My parents got us Ancestry.com kits as Christmas gifts, and since then, our lives have never been the same -- and never will be."
The family says the DNA test revealed that Jessica was not biologically related to Mike, and Jeanine had been impregnated with someone else's sperm.
Mike Harvey said the moment was like waking up in someone else's life. "Learning that your entire reality isn't what you believed it to be is hard to explain," he added.
Jessica eventually tracked down her biological father, they confirmed it with a paternity test, and it turns out he was also a patient of Dr. Spirtos at the same time as the Harveys, according to the lawsuit.
The Harveys said nothing will change that Jessica is their daughter, but they want to hold the doctor and the hospital accountable. They filed a civil lawsuit against both on Tuesday in the Summit County Court of Common Pleas, alleging medical malpractice, lack of informed consent, negligence, battery, and breach of contract, among other things.
"The Harveys placed their trust in Dr. Spirtos. And they want the truth about how this tragedy happened," attorney Ashlie Case Sletvold said in statement. "Did Summa fail to properly clean its laboratory equipment? Was this the result of Summa's mixing up patients' sperm samples? The Harveys -- and the public -- deserve to know."
Mike Bernstein, Summa Health Corporate Communications System Director, said the hospital is taking the allegation seriously and understands the impact this has had on the family.
"We are aware of an allegation that has been made claiming in 1991 a patient was artificially inseminated with the semen from a person who is not her husband," Bernstein said in a statement to multiple outlets. "At this point, we have not met with the family or conducted testing of our own. Given the very limited information that we have and the amount of time that has passed, it remains our hope that the attorneys representing the family will work with us to make that next step a priority."
Attorneys for the Harveys say this case, and many other instances of fertility misconduct, highlight the largely unregulated nature of the U.S. assisted reproductive technology industry.
"This is why we often characterize the current state of regulation over the assisted reproductive technology industry as the 'wild west.' Meaningful oversight is absent; error reporting is essentially non-existent; and tragic cases of lost, destroyed, or otherwise improperly handled embryos are on the rise," attorney Adam Wolf said in a statement. "How many more people will have to share their heartbreaking stories before our legislators take this problem seriously?"
Related
Related
