A court in the Netherlands has ruled that DNA tests could be carried out on the former director of a fertility clinic accused of using his own sperm to father dozens of children.
“DNA samples of a recently deceased doctor may be taken from sequestered goods to establish a DNA profile,” the court in Rotterdam said.
But it added: “The results of this examination must remain sealed until another judge rules whether or not the results can be compared with the DNA of a group of children” born via IVF.
The group of 22 parents and children claim that the doctor, Jan Karbaat, may have used his sperm instead of that of the chosen donor at a fertility clinic he ran near Rotterdam until 2009.
Karbaat, who died in April at 89, once reportedly claimed to have fathered 60 children through IVF treatment, the group’s lawyer Tim Bueters told the court.
But the court ruled on Friday there was not enough evidence so far to support that the claim he used his own semen.
The children and their families would therefore have to start new court proceedings to provide more proof, it said.
The 23 plaintiffs, most born in the 1980s or later, have called for DNA tests to be carried out to see if Karbaat was their biological father. While he was alive, the doctor had refused such tests.
Police seized some personal objects from his home on 2 May after a court order, including his toothbrush.
His family’s lawyer has fiercely fought against such tests, saying their privacy should be respected.
Karbaat’s clinic closed eight years ago amid administrative irregularities after numerous complaints and two inspections by public health authorities.
He is thought to have falsified data as well as the analyses and descriptions of the donors, and to have had more than the maximum of six children allowed via a single sperm donor.
But the scandal has widened in the Netherlands.
Last month, a test using DNA from one of Karbaat’s known children reportedly showed that the doctor could be the father of 19 children, born through IVF procedures.
It is unclear whether the 19 are among the 23 people involved in the court case.
Another round of tests also showed that three of the 19 had been born after IVF treatment at a second fertility clinic in Rotterdam where Karbaat was the medical director for 15 years, the daily AD newspaper reported.
He left the clinic at Zuider hospital, now called the Maasstad, in 1979 after a dispute, and later opened his fertility clinic where the other irregularities were alleged to have occurred.