- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
- Click to share on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
- Click here to share on LinkedIn (Opens in a new window)
- Click to email a friend (Opens in a new window)
(CNN) - When an Oregon medical student was asked to donate sperm in 1989, he was promised that only five children would be born, all on the other side of the country, according to a lawsuit alleging that a clinic violated the agreement to the allow the birth of at least 17 babies, among other alleged violations.
Bryce Cleary, now a doctor, states in his $ 5.25 million lawsuit that the Oregon University of Health and Science did not adhere to the stipulation that his sperm could only be used by women living on the east coast. The result, according to the lawsuit: the majority, if not all, of the 17 babies were born in Oregon, and some of the children went to the same schools, churches or social functions as their sibling media without knowing they were related.
Cleary says he is a victim of fraud and has suffered emotional distress since he learned of births.
"I wanted to help people fighting infertility and I had faith that the university would act responsibly and keep their promises," Cleary said at the press conference. "I recently realized that these promises were a lie."
"The university treats any accusation of misconduct with the seriousness it deserves," said Tamara Hargens-Bradley, spokesman for the Oregon University of Health and Science, in a statement. He added that the institution cannot comment on the case due to the patient's confidentiality obligations.
Cleary, who has three sons and an adopted daughter along with his wife, learned of the other children when two of them contacted him in March 2018. In search of his biological father, they used Ancestry.com and “specific and substantive information” of the fertility clinic to identify him and other siblings.
Cleary then sent his own DNA to Ancestry.com and that led to the discovery that he had at least 17 children born through his sperm donations, according to the lawsuit.
'I knew something was wrong'
"When the results came, I knew something was wrong," Cleary said. "There were four equal instantaneous results and the chances of that happening were unreasonable."
"It seems that the university really did not take into account the fact that they were creating humans," 25-year-old Allysen Allee, who was conceived with Cleary's donated sperm, told the news conference. "They were reckless with this and it seems that it was just numbers and money for them."
Cleary donated sperm at the university after the hospital's fertility clinic encouraged him and his classmates to participate in a research program, according to the lawsuit. Cleary alleges that the university assured him that sperm would be used for fertility research or treatments, or both.
Because the clinic did not keep records of where the sperm was sent and used outside the state and the region, "it is impossible to discover how many of the children born from the donor's donations reside in Oregon, the United States, and / or the world." , affirms the demand.
Sperm
