Fertility doctor may also have used own sperm to impregnate women in Leiden
The Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) is investigating whether the controversial fertility doctor Jan Wildschut also used his own sperm to inseminate women in Leiden in the 1970s and 1980s. So far, the hospital hasn’t found a trace of Wildschut in administration from the time, though he did work at the hospital in that period and several patients have mentioned him by name, Omroep West reports.
Wildschut, who died in 2009, used his own sperm during fertility treatments at the Sophia Hospital in Zwolle between 1981 and 1993, fathering dozens of children. Before that, he worked in the department that handled artificial insemination at the Leiden hospital between 1971 and 1981.
Last week, the LUMC announced an investigation into whether employees used their own sperm to inseminate patients after it discovered an article in the university magazine Mare from 1980 stating that male staff did just that.
Because Wildschut worked at the hospital at the time he formed part of the investigation. However, nothing about him can be found in the hospital archives. How that is possible is unclear. The investigation is still ongoing.
According to the researchers at the Leiden archives, “several mothers and several donors” mentioned Wildschut by name as an employee or practitioner. “But the administration from the early 1980s is very sparse and unfortunately we have (almost) no registration of insemination treatments from the 1970s, let alone donor data.”
The LUMC stressed that it has not received any signals that Wildschut used his own sperm in fertility treatments at the hospital. Nor have any offspring from LUMC fertility treatments been linked to Wildschut’s DNA.
The LUMC asked parents and donor children to report to the Fiom Foundation or commercial DNA databases so that their DNA can be checked against Wildschut’s. The Leiden hospital also called for a large national investigation into all clinics in the Netherlands that performed fertility treatments.
