A Massachusetts couple is suing a fertility clinic for allegedly impregnating the wife with a stranger’s embryo instead of her own, and then denying they had made a mistake.
Following several failed attempts to conceive a baby through vitro fertilization, the couple discovered they were expecting a baby girl. At the recommendation of their obstetrician, they underwent genetic testing to rule out abnormalities.
The tests revealed a healthy baby — who was not biologically related to the parents, who are identified as Jane and John Doe in court filings.
Doctors at the New York Fertility Institute, who the couple paid for the IVF procedure, assured them that the test was not a problem and that they were the baby’s biological parents, court records show.
The mother claims in the lawsuit that she called Dr Khalid Sultan, who had performed the embryo transfer.
‘He assured her that this was surely “a lab error” and that she “shouldn’t be concerned,”‘ the lawsuit claims.
‘But, as Mr and Ms Doe continued to worry, they decided to repeat the Panorama prenatal screening a second time to ensure the embryo was healthy and was biologically related to them.’
The second test came back with the same result, again claiming that the baby was not biologically related to the couple.
In late October, the couple claim that Dr Sultan called them to explain the test results, and said that the mother had a rare condition and that her body contained two sets of DNA.
Sultan claimed she had mosaicism and said that ‘even for him – a doctor – this was a complex situation and very hard to understand.’
Still, Jane and John Doe worried that the test was accurate, that they weren’t the parents and the clinic had transferred a stranger’s embryo into Jane’s uterus.
Fearing a possible custody battle once the baby was born, the couple chose to terminate the six-month pregnancy days before it would have been illegal to do so, according to court records.
Following the abortion, the couple decided to sue the New York Fertility Institute, the facility’s embryologist Michael Femi Obasaju, and fertility specialists Khalid Sultan and Majid Fateh for allegedly impregnating Jane Doe with a stranger’s embryo.
In the suit, the couple also accuses the clinic of losing Jane Doe’s embryos and failing to disclose whether her embryos were implanted into a stranger, potentially giving away the couple’s biological child.
The couple also accuses the clinic and doctors of purposefully covering up that Obasaju has previously implanted patients with a stranger’s embryo.
‘Each of these errors have caused Mr and Ms Doe incomprehensible physical and emotional pain and suffering and, ultimately, when the errors were discovered, led to a termination of Ms Doe’s pregnancy,’ the lawsuit says.
Jane and John Doe are seeking unspecified damages and want a judge to order the fertility clinic to find their embryos.
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