On November 2, the National Council of the Order of Physicians received an email written by PMAnonyme. This association, which lists several hundred people conceived by donation of gametes and fights for access to personal origins, wished to warn about possible “Serious ethical and deontological faults” during the 70s and 80s. They relate to three French gynecologists, who would have used their own sperm to inseminate patients, “And this without their knowledge”, reports France Info in a survey published on Tuesday.
During her investigations, the journalist, who consulted the document in question, was also able to collect the testimonies of two of the three women born from gamete donation between 1974 and 1986, who “Discovered genetic links with the families of their mothers’ gynecologists”.
Born from insemination in 1975, Natacha Jolivet found a match with four of her “genetic cousins”, ie people who themselves performed a test and shared a part of DNA with her. In this case, here, it is a question of a first DNA match of 4%, “Or a close genetic link according to specialists” surveyed by France Info. The media was able to consult the results obtained from a cross between genetic data and family trees. The conclusion is clear: there is indeed a filiation with the parents of his mother’s gynecologist, who has since died.
Ditto for Marjorie Mendes, the second person questioned, whose “match” which appears on the results shows 4.6% of shared DNA, followed by “many others”. By doing his research and discreetly discussing with his new “Genetic cousins” via social networks, “The name of her mother’s gynecologist appears during these conversations”. In reality, she discovers “Genetic matches with seven members” of the specialist’s family, still alive today: children of the doctor’s cousins, a direct cousin of the gynecologist and his sister’s grandson. “When I realize, I start to blame it, tells this now in her thirties to France Info. It’s still a real violence. “ In the case of Marjorie Mendes, two out of three specialists consulted estimate at 99.9% “The probability that the gynecologist or one of his brothers is the progenitor”.
The beginning of a “health scandal”?
These stories, which tend to show the gray areas that surrounded the pathways of ART before the first bioethics laws in the early 1990s, might only be the beginning of“A health scandal”, estimates PMAnonyme from France Info.
The investigation highlights in particular the legislative loopholes of the time, where nothing in the law prohibited the use of donated fresh sperm for insemination, something prohibited since the law of December 31, 1991. But before that, “What was happening in the cabinets, we were not informed at all”, notes a professor of medicine and reproductive biology interviewed by France Info. “It was free. ”