A former professor at Harvard Medical School and founder of one of the nation’s largest fertility clinics is being accused of secretly impregnating a patient in 1980 after promising the sperm would come from an anonymous donor, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday.
Sarah Depoian, 73, said she and her husband first went to Dr. Merle Berger, now-retired professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology, in 1979 to discuss an intrauterine insemination. Depoian said Berger told her the sperm would come from an anonymous donor “who resembled her husband, who did not know her, and whom she did not know,” according to the lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
