An Oregon doctor who says his donated sperm was used to father at least 17 children in violation of an agreement that allowed for no more than five children filed a $5.25 million lawsuit Wednesday against Oregon Health & Science University.
Bryce Cleary, now 53, said he could have even more children from the sperm donations he made 30 years ago when he was in medical school. He believes OHSU’s fertility clinic was “incredibly irresponsible.”
During a news conference, Cleary sat by one of the 17 children discovered with the help of Ancestry.com. Cleary, who lives in Corvallis, and 25-year-old Allysen Allee, who lives in Vancouver, had just met and share some of the same concerns.
“The idea that you can produce that many children from one donor and throw them all in the same region?” Cleary said, his voice rough with emotion. "... There has got to be some reforms. I can’t control an industry, but I can sure stand up and say, ‘This isn’t cool.’”
After Cleary donated his sperm, he married and had three biological sons and adopted a daughter. Cleary has learned that at least two of the offspring conceived through OHSU have attended the same schools, church or social activities as one of his sons and his daughter, according to the lawsuit.
The children Cleary raised and his fertility clinic offspring have crossed paths, the lawsuit said, because OHSU’s fertility clinic also breached another promise: that all of the children would be born to women living outside Oregon or on the East Coast.
That would lessen the chances that his various children might meet or become romantically involved, according to Cleary and his lawsuit.
The suit says most if not all of Cleary’s offspring were born in Oregon.
A spokeswoman for OHSU, Tamara Hargens-Bradley, said in a statement that “OHSU treats any allegation of misconduct with the gravity it deserves. In light of our patient privacy obligations and the confidentiality of protected health information, we cannot comment on this case.”
Cleary said although he knows he doesn’t have any legal obligations toward the 17 offspring, he’s overwhelmed by the moral and ethical obligations he now feels toward those children and what kind of relationship he should maintain with them if they contact him.
His family have talked about the possibility that one of the 17 offspring may one day need a kidney: Will he be obligated to donate one of his? Or will the children he raised feel they must?
So far, Cleary said he’s met three of the children produced through the fertility clinic.
Allee, who attended the news conference with him, said she sees the potential for problems.
“I’m expecting my third child right now," she said, “... and the idea of my children having dozens and dozens of cousins that will be their ages and in the area is concerning.”
She continued: “It feels like OHSU really didn’t take into consideration the fact that they were creating humans. They were reckless with this, and it feels like it was just money and numbers to them."
Allee said she isn’t planning to sue OHSU, but was speaking out to help prevent similar cases from happening.
According to Cleary’s lawsuit, he donated his sperm when he was a first-year medical student at OHSU in 1989 after the hospital’s fertility clinic solicited him and his male classmates. Cleary said he thinks he was paid about $40 each time he donated, but he doesn’t remember how many times.
His lawsuit says that in March 2018, he started to learn that his sperm donations successfully resulted in the births of some children after two young women, born through the fertility clinic process, contacted him.
The suit says the young women told him they used Ancestry.com data as well as “specific and substantive information” given to them by the fertility clinic to identify more siblings and Cleary himself. Cleary then sent off his own DNA to Ancestry.com, leading to the discovery that he had at least 17 offspring born through his sperm donations.
Christopher Best, one of the attorneys representing Cleary, said fertility clinics are lightly regulated and that most of the government rules they must follow have to do with maintaining privacy between donors and recipients and severing any legal obligations sperm donors owe to their offspring.
Best said he’s not aware of any regulations in Oregon limiting the number of offspring a single donor can father.
Lawsuits such as Cleary’s are unusual but not unheard of given the popularity of fertility clinics and the burgeoning age of affordable mail-in DNA test kits.
In 2017, an Illinois woman filed suit against a sperm bank she patronized, claiming that her two children have autism and are among at least a dozen children in an autism cluster conceived with sperm from the same donor. In March, the company offered $250,000 and the woman agreed to drop the lawsuit, according to The Washington Post.
Cleary’s suit was filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court by Best, attorney Daniel Gatti and attorney James Cleary. James Cleary is one of the three sons raised by Bryce Cleary.
-- Aimee Green
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