Doctor sued as wrong sperm alleged in fertility cases

Dr. Norman Barwin of Ottawa is accused in two lawsuits of using the wrong sperm in fertility treatments. The suits ask that Barwin himself undergo a genetic test.





Lawyers for two families suing a well-known Ottawa fertility doctor for allegedly using the wrong sperm samples to create their children say they believe other patients of the clinic may be in for a surprise.

Dr. Bernard Norman Barwin and the Broadview Fertility Clinic, which he owns, are the targets of two lawsuits launched in Ontario Superior Court seeking a combined $3-million in damages for “heightened anxiety, depression and frustration,” among other things, suffered by the families.

Both statements of claim, obtained by the National Post, ask the court to order a test of Dr. Barwin to rule out “the possibility that he is the donor whose sperm was used to inseminate.”

Pam MacEachern, lawyer for the two families, said she is investigating the possibility that her clients aren’t the only parents who may have been inseminated with the wrong sperm, given the proximity in time, 2005 and 2007, between the alleged incidents.

“The fact that it happened to two people a couple of years apart in very similar circumstances gives us a lot of concern,” Ms. MacEachern said yesterday. “We believe that there’s a good basis to believe that it probably has happened to other people.”

Dr. Barwin, who came to Ottawa in 1973 and set up his private fertility clinic in the mid-1980s, denies the allegations, stating in a statement of defence that “all medical care and treatments provided were carried out in a careful, competent and diligent manner and in accordance with the applicable standard of care.”

Karen Hamway, Dr. Barwin’s lawyer, said yesterday that neither she nor her client was able to talk about the cases because of “patient confidentiality.”

A former president of Planned Parenthood Canada, Dr. Barwin was named to the Order of Canada in 1997 and received an honourary degree from Carleton University last year. He is licensed to practise medicine in Ontario as a general practitioner.

According to the first statement of claim, Ottawa resident Trudy Moore, 36, and her husband Matthew Guest, also 36, approached Dr. Barwin in the summer of 2006 to discuss the possibility of using a surrogate — Ms. Moore’s sister — to carry the couple’s baby.

Treatment began the following year with Ms. Moore’s sister as the surrogate.

It is alleged that on April 16, 2007, Mr. Guest provided a sperm sample at the clinic that was examined by Dr. Barwin under a microscope and who then left the room to prepare the sample. When he returned, he asked Mr. Guest to leave so he could inseminate the surrogate, according to the statement of claim.

More rounds of insemination were performed the next day, this time using what the plaintiffs thought was sperm provided a month earlier by Mr. Guest to Dr. Barwin, who allegedly had kept it frozen.

The insemination was successful and the couple’s daughter, Samantha, was born on Dec. 29, 2007. When the parents were informed that their daughter had Rh-positive blood, they became concerned because both Ms. Moore’s sister and Mr. Guest were Rh-negative.

A DNA test proved that Mr. Guest was not Samantha’s biological father.

In addition to seeking $1.75-million in damages, the lawsuit also seeks an order requiring Dr. Barwin to disclose whose sperm was used, and if any of Mr. Guest’s sperm might have been used to inseminate other women.

The second lawsuit was filed last month by Ottawa resident Jacqueline Slinn, who claims she was inseminated by Dr. Barwin using sperm from a donor, identified as No. 3168. She became pregnant and gave birth to a baby girl, Bridget, on March 15, 2005.

When Bridget was two years old, Ms. Slinn joined a donor sibling registry and made contact with several other mothers who had been inseminated by the same donor. In June 2009, Ms. Slinn agreed to have Bridget tested and compared against two other children from the same donor.

The tests revealed that none of the children shared the same biological father, according to the statement of claim. The lawsuit states that in April 2010, Ms. Slinn “knew conclusively” that her daughter was not a match for donor 3168.

The statement of claim says a test on a vial of sperm from donor 3168 obtained from Dr. Barwin’s office by Ms. Slinn concluded that the sample had been “contaminated with an unidentified male DNA, presumed to be sperm.”

None of the allegations have been proven in court.

“How could this possibly have happened?” said Ms. MacEachern. “These cases raise a ton of concerns. There could be health consequences to the mother and child. Was the semen properly screened in the first place? Then you just get into the other issues where you don’t know what the genetic heritage of the child is and what that gives rise to.”