2 lawsuits allege doctors used their own sperm in fertility treatments without patients’ consent. The families involved say their memories ‘are forever tainted.’
- Two civil lawsuits filed Wednesday allege that doctors used their own sperm in fertility treatments without their patients' knowledge.
- The families involved say they found out their now-adult children weren't the products of healthy anonymous sperm, as they believed, after the children used home DNA testing kits.
- The cases shed light on a largely unregulated fertility industry.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
When Jimmy Mallas got a DNA testing kit for Christmas last year, he expected to learn something new and exciting about who he was.
Instead, he said he learned his biological father was not a healthy and anonymous sperm donor, as his mother had been promised, but rather her fertility doctor, who used his sperm in her treatments without consent.
"Now I have to somehow process and accept that my mother's abuser is my biological father," Mallas said during a media briefing Wednesday.
Mallas is one player in two civil cases filed Wednesday against doctors who allegedly used their own sperm in fertility treatments, despite telling the patients the sperm was from healthy and anonymous donors.
The families and the lawyer representing them, Adam Wolf of Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane & Conway, spoke to media Wednesday about these experiences, and what they hope to gain from taking the doctors, both of whom still work in the medical field, to court.
The two cases, Wolf said, are "the tip of the iceberg of the hundreds of fertility fraud cases that will be exposed from home DNA kits like Ancestry.com and 23andMe."
The testing companies did not respond to requests to comment in time for publication.
Both cases allege that fertility doctors used their own sperm in treatments
The case involving Mallas and his mother, Beverly Willhelm, is against Dr. Phillip Milgram, who now works at an addiction medicine clinic in Carlsbad, California.
Willhelm, of San Diego, says Milgram used his own sperm without her knowledge in 1988 when she and her then-husband went to him for fertility treatments. She was 20 years old.
"It's hard to explain the shock, pain, and confusion I felt when I found out the person that I love dearly, my own son, is genetically related to the doctor who inserted his own sperm inside of me without my consent and against my wishes," Willhelm said during the conference.
According to Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane & Conway, Milgram was later stripped of his medical license in California for drug-related conduct, including practicing while intoxicated, before regaining his license for his current practice.
Milgram's alleged history of addiction has complicated the discovery for Mallas. "Am I predisposed to drug abuse and addiction?" he said. "Dr Milgrim is a predator. Does that live somewhere in my genes?"
When Insider reached him by phone, Milgram declined to comment.
The other case is against Dr. Michael S. Kiken, who is licensed to practice in Virginia and West Virginia.
Katie Richards, of the San Francisco area, says Kiken inseminated her with his own sperm without her knowledge, resulting in her two children.
"Now, I have to live knowing that he violated me, and that my children – whom I love dearly – are a result of his disgusting conduct," Richards said. "All of our memories, and all of the memories that we have yet to make, are forever tainted."
Like Mallas's family, Richards said she discovered her children's biological father was not a healthy anonymous donor when her daughter, Julie Druyor, used a DNA testing kit she received last Christmas.
Druyor discovered she was 50% Jewish, had a half-brother, and had inherited Tay Sachs disease. She said a genealogist "was able to make the connection" that Kiken is her biological father.
"I used to look in the mirror and recognize who was looking back at me," Druyor, who lives in Dallas, Texas, said. "Now, sometimes I look in the mirror and don't even recognize myself. Sometimes, I see 'him.'"
Kiken did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The fertility industry is largely unregulated
In the last six years, Wolf, the attorney in the current cases, has handled hundreds of similar cases involving over 1,000 victims, according to a press release.
The sagas shed light on the largely unregulated fertility industry, which includes close to 500 clinics and centers. There's no one government agency that oversees it, including by managing how centers label tissue (like embryos) or disciplining centers that don't comply with professional guidelines, NBC News reported.
That's not to say the industry is entirely rogue.
A measure of self-regulation comes from the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, a nonprofit with member organizations that are required to advertise truthfully, accurately report outcomes, and work with nationally accredited labs, according to the organization. Some 90% of assisted reproductive technology clinics in the U.S. belong to SART.
But even highly-regarded organizations can't prevent malpractice or errors, like one highly publicized case last year involving two couples who sued a California fertility clinic after an embryo mixup led one of them to have one of the others' baby.
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