One of Australia’s biggest IVF providers accused of massive blunder after mother gives birth to the WRONG baby
An IVF laboratory mix-up after two men donated sperm on the same day led to an Aussie couple having a baby fathered by a different donor to the one they selected.
The couple went through Queensland Fertility Group (QFG), owned by Australian IVF giant Virtus Health, to have their baby in 2013, reported the ABC’s 7.30.
For 11 years, the health company has allegedly worked to hide the mix-up between sperm donors that resulted from a lack of ‘double witnessing’, essentially double checking, at a partnered American lab, even though it was the standard in Australia.
The Brisbane mother had taken to an anonymous online group asking for advice when she noticed the child had a darker skin tone to both her and her partner.
They’d applied to receive sperm from a Caucasian man with similar features to the woman’s husband.
While they both love the child all the same, they became worried if the unidentified donor had any health or genetic conditions they should know of.
After speaking with QFG, the couple signed a non-disclosure agreement forbidding them from making their situation public.
Both Queensland Fertility Group and the American lab, Seattle Sperm Bank, said they had changed their procedures since then to eliminate the risk of a similar mix up happening again.
Queensland Fertility Group and a partnered American lab allegedly mixed up the information of sperm donors, meaning a couple received sperm from a donor they hadn’t chosen
A friend (pictured) of the couple who received the wrong sperm donation said they’d chosen a Caucasian donor, but the child was mixed race
A friend of the couple who knew about the lab’s mistake, before the NDA was signed, has shared their story.
‘The child is very much loved, there’s no doubt of that whatsoever. The mother and father adore the child,’ she told ABC’s 7.30.
‘That’s not the issue, the issue was you put your faith and your trust in the clinic, that they’re going to give you the right sperm.’
An internal investigation by QFG pinpointed the error to the Seattle Sperm Bank.
Two men had visited the clinic on the same day – one described as Caucasian and the other as African American Nigerian.
That clinic did not use double witnessing to ensure donors were correctly identified, as was the industry standard in Australia. It has since been introduced in the American lab.
The couple’s friend said they were shocked after realising they’d allegedly been deceived by QFG.
‘They chose a donor that obviously had all the attributes of the father. He’s a tall, Caucasian male,’ she said.
Several other couples were allegedly affected by similar mistakes, with an audit by QFG in 2023 finding 99 per cent of local sperm frozen before 2020 was at risk of being mislabelled
‘Once the child was born, the child didn’t really look Caucasian.’
QFG said it has changed its procedures and has since destroyed any donations at risk of being misidentified.
‘We can confirm that the laboratory error of the wrong label being affixed to the donor specimen occurred in 2013,’ a spokesperson for Seattle Sperm Bank said.
‘Following this, Seattle Sperm Bank created a robust, seven-step double verification, with a computer-assisted automated witnessing system that prevents this type of error from occurring again.’
Daily Mail has contacted Queensland Fertility Group for further comment.
