Former UCSF fertility doctor accused of impregnating patient

A Seattle fertility doctor has surrendered his medical license after being accused of using his own sperm to inseminate a California woman he was treating as a fellow at the University of California, San Francisco 14 years ago.

Following the allegations, which were made public earlier this month, UCSF sent letters to women who had been treated by doctors informing them of the situation and recommending genetic testing for their families.

Christopher Herndon voluntarily surrendered his Washington state medical license on November 29 after resigning from the University of Washington, where he had specialized in reproductive medicine since 2017, in September. He does not have a valid medical license in California.

UCSF officials said they learned of Herndon's surrender of his license and the allegations against him on Dec. 1 and began communicating with former patients on Dec. 7. The university is hiring an outside law firm to conduct an investigation into Mr. Herndon.

Herndon was a research fellow at UCSF specializing in reproductive endocrinology and fertility from 2008 to 2011, the university said. He was a part-time physician at San Francisco General Hospital from 2011 to 2014, and also worked in private practice during that time, UCSF said.

“The conduct with which Dr. Herndon is accused is inexcusable, and we are considering all legal options against him, including possible civil and criminal litigation,” UCSF said in a statement Friday. Ta.

Herndon's case was first reported on December 5th. Seattle Times; his ties to UCSF were not made public at the time.

The allegations were reported to the Washington Medical Board last summer. The commission conducted its own investigation and determined that Mr. Herndon should surrender his license. Mr. Herndon agreed to surrender his license, but he denied the charges.

Herndon was in training as a clinical researcher in California when he treated her in November 2009, according to allegations from former patients summarized in the committee's report.

According to the medical board, the woman had previously used donor sperm for artificial insemination to conceive her first child. She visited UCSF for the same surgery on her second child and requested the same donor sperm.

According to the commission, the woman became pregnant and gave birth to her second child in 2010. DNA tests later revealed that her two children did not share any paternal DNA. They did not have the same biological father. Further tests revealed that the sperm donor the patient had chosen for her two children had not produced a second child.

The woman then enrolled her second child in genetic testing and ancestry services. The medical board said the service identified potential family connections to the Herndon surname. Her genetic match is 25%, which means that person is a grandparent, aunt, or uncle. The woman hired a private investigator who eventually discovered the person she found online was Herndon's brother, the child's biological uncle or aunt.

The medical board said Mr Herndon “exchanged donor sperm chosen by the woman for his own sperm” during artificial insemination without the woman's “knowledge or consent”. “This was an intentional violation of (Mr. Herndon's) trust as a physician and had a significant impact on the patient and the patient's family.”

Related parties University of Wisconsin Medicine The Washington health system said there was no evidence of inappropriate behavior by Herndon while on the job, but it warned former patients and offered free genetic testing to women who underwent artificial insemination procedures. He also said that there are.

“Based on what we know at this time, the safeguards in place at the University of Wisconsin Medical Center are similar to those that allegedly occurred in California in 2009,” university spokeswoman Barbara Clements said in a statement Friday. This should prevent incidents like this one.” She said the university had “many safeguards” in place, including “multiple identification checks, careful storage processes, and testing egg and sperm specimens in separate laboratories.”

“We are reviewing our safety measures and procedures to continue to ensure the highest level of specimen safety. We do not believe our patients are at risk.”

Herndon graduated from Yale School of Medicine and completed her residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, which is affiliated with Harvard University. Mr. Herndon could not be reached for comment. The woman she accused has not been identified.

Megan Heller, who was sterilized at UCSF during Herndon's stay, said she received a letter from UCSF on Wednesday informing her of the situation. She said the university is offering her family free counseling, sexually transmitted disease testing and genetic testing.

Herndon artificially inseminated Heller, now 43, but the pregnancy failed. She then became pregnant using in vitro fertilization, which involves fertilizing eggs in her laboratory and inserting the embryos into the uterus. Heller said Herndon was not directly involved in the IVF process, but she would have still been at UCSF at the time.

“I didn't get pregnant with that particular procedure[Herndon did]but I continued to undergo IVF at UCSF with the same doctor (physician) and with the same colleagues, and I got pregnant,” Heller said. Told. . “During so many procedures, I was unconscious and sedated. I don't know if (Herndon) was in that room. I don't know what role he played during his tenure. I don’t know how.”

Her son is now 12 years old, and Heller said she plans to take advantage of the genetic testing offered by UCSF.

So-called fertility fraud, particularly cases in which doctors use their own sperm to impregnate patients, has been a problem in reproductive medicine since artificial insemination became popular more than 50 years ago.

In recent years, this practice has become more widely known as genetic testing has become widely available. In many cases, people sign up for testing out of curiosity, only to find out that the father's girlfriend's DNA is different from what they expected.

donor was deceivedA website that tracks such cases has identified nine doctors in California accused of using their own sperm for artificial insemination on patients and impregnating 18 people, some dating back to the 1970s. . An Indianapolis doctor used his own sperm to impregnate dozens of women and became the biological father of more than 90 children in the 1970s and 1980s.

“There are so many unknowns. How in the world did this happen?” Heller said. “It's horrifying to think how sloppy the protocols must have been for something like this to happen. And who can say how many times it's happened?”

Contact Erin Allday: [email protected]; Twitter: @erinallday