IVF clinic mix up reveals father isn’t related to daughter after wrong embryo implanted

The daughter made the discovery when she submitted her DNA to ancestry.com

A container with frozen embryos and sperm stored in liquid nitrogen is removed at a fertility clinic in Fort Myers (stock image) (Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

A man and his daughter have filed a lawsuit against a Las Vegas fertility clinic after a DNA test revealed that they are not genetically related.

The lawsuit accuses a fertility doctor at the Nevada Fertility C.A.R.E.S clinic of implanting the man’s wife with an embryo that didn’t contain genetic material from either parent, according to the documents obtained by Law&Crime.

The daughter, identified in the suit as KP Doe, made the discovery when she submitted her DNA to ancestry.com, a genetic testing site, “to know more about her ancestral background.”

After she received the test results, her father, identified only as “EP Doe,” told her about the IVF treatment they went through in the early 2000s after being unable to conceive.

“Obviously, because EP knew what it would show regarding CWP Doe, EP then told KP that CWP Doe was not her biological mother and that they had used an egg donor and EP’s sperm via IVF to have her,” according to the suit.

The man and his wife, identified as “CWP Doe,” used an egg provided by an anonymous donor to be combined with the man providing the sperm. Their daughter was born in 2006.

In 2022, KP Doe’s mother died from “various autoimmune and heart issues,” which pushed her to seek out more information through genetic testing.

When she received the results in October 2023, it revealed that she was not related to her father. The father and daughter also later learned that she was born from another embryo created by the clinic doctor for another couple whose biological father was a man in Las Vegas.

The lawsuit also claims that it is “possible that somewhere out in the world, due to the actions of defendants and each of them, EP has a biological child.”

The father says he never gave permission or consent for the embryo created for them to be used by anyone else, according to the lawsuit that claims both father and daughter have suffered extreme and severe emotional upset.

Now, he is going through adoption proceedings to legally become his daughter’s father, which the lawsuit says “will cost a significant sum of money.”

“EP was deprived of the opportunity to create life from his heritage as was promised and planned by Defendants … KP is not the biological daughter of EP as was intended, and KP is not the biological daughter of EP or the egg donor,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit also alleges that similar mix-ups “may very well have happened to the hundreds of persons treated by Defendants from 2002 through 2012.”

“The only way anyone would know would be DNA testing of all persons who used the services of Defendants from 2002-2012 and the children created thereby. Defendants, and each of them, should pay for same.”

The lawsuit seeks an undetermined amount of punitive damages as well as compensatory damages greater than $15,000 as they sue for malpractice, negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Nevada Fertility C.A.R.E.S. closed years ago, but doctor Rachel McConnell and embryologist Dee Harris were named as defendants in the lawsuit.

Around the same time of the mix-up in 2006, McConnell had settled a $30,000 lawsuit for “negligence in freezing and storing embryos,” according to KLAS.