and donor conception she has documented more than two dozen american doctors and at least a halfdozen internationally who have been sued by their former patients for fertility fraud ms portugal founded the organization in 2019 after learning that her mothers physician was also her biological fatherin canada a notorious case involving norman barwin a fertility doctor led to a classaction lawsuit involving 226 former patients and their children in july in what is believed to be the first legal settlement of its kind the families accepted the canadian equivalent of about 10 million in compensationnearly all of the physicians who have been accused were discovered as a result of dna tests taken by their offspringms hellquists mother like mr berrys had seen dr wortman for help becoming pregnant he told ms hellquists parents that he had used a medical student as a sperm donorarthur caplan a bioethicist at new york universitys langone medical center said that this sort of deception by a physician can lead to traumatic distress for the women involvedit soon emerged that dr wortman was one of three physicians in rochester all friends and colleagues who starting in the 1960s had secretly used their own sperm to impregnate womenimagecreditdavid ryder for the new york timesdr frederick dischinger who died last year and dr robert tichell who is retired were found in june to have secretly used their own sperm with patients according to genetic evidence gathered by dnangelsorg an organization whose volunteers assist people seeking knowledge of their biological roots the evidence came from two people whose mothers had sought help with pregnancy and who suspected they were biological offspring of the doctorsdr tichell lost his license in 1997 for unrelated reasonsreached by phone at his home in buffalo dr tichell 89 said it was possible that he was the biological father of at least one of his patients childreni was a donor at one time he said sometimes back in those days before the days of fertility clinics if you couldnt get hold of a donor and you were working with a patient who was looking to get pregnant it wasnt exactly ethical but it wasnt unknown to happen he added i assume other doctors did it but no one ever talked about ithe elaborated in a subsequent text message i admit i did it when a donor did not respond women were anxious to be inseminated and the timing was crucial it may have been less than perfect but with luck the women were able to conceiveadvancing legislationwhen children were conceived via artificial insemination in the 1970s and 1980s sperm banks were not prevalent and the practice of freezing sperm was not widespread so many physicians used socalled fresh sperm from donors the first largescale sperm bank in the country california cryobank was created in 1977after the aids epidemic physicians started using frozen sperm because it allowed donors to be retested for aids after six months by 1988 the food and drug administration and