What is Fertility Fraud? - podcast episode cover

What is Fertility Fraud?

Apr 12, 202445 min
--:--
--:--
Listen in podcast apps:

Episode description

For millions of people across the planet, fertility treatments make families possible. Each year in the US alone, procedures like IVF allow thousands of children a chance at life -- so long as everything is conducted in an ethical manner. However, as Ben, Matt and Noel dive into the dark side of this multimillion dollar industry, they discover these treatments can also result in some deeply disturbing crimes and conspiracies. Tune in to learn more about fertility fraud.

They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Speaker 1

From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2

Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nolan.

Speaker 3

They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul Michigan, troll decand most importantly, you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know? Do you guys remember growing up in the era of talk shows like the Donna Hues, the Wimfreys, the Springers.

Speaker 4

I mean when I saw them, it was when I was staying home sick from school because that was all daytime stuff. So you know, it would be you'd be flipping around and you'd see people foreign chairs at each other and talking about taking a DNA test to prove parentage of of of children in question.

Speaker 3

Mmmmm yeah. And you remember these two, right, Matt, Yeah, yeah, I have. Phil Donahue always stood out to me, uh because because of his his mop of hair. I never I never figured out whether it was real.

Speaker 4

But more a little a little furry animal seating atop his home and never did a show about that, did he?

Speaker 3

Uh? Maury Povich was in particular that that show became associated with the idea of paternity tests, so much so that it became a cultural trope. Paul, if we could play a clip, you are not so we remember this stuff. And for a lot of people, it was the sort of bread and circus entertainment pre DNA. Uh. It's it was. It was a fun time. It was like any other proto reality television. There were performers, they are paid actors pretending to be real life people. For a lot of folks,

it was a good cathartic time. They could vicariously experience messy drama. But Tonight's episodes about the darker side of this topic, a genuine series of conspiracies that at times spiral out of control. We have to ask, what on earth is fertility fraud? And I think we have to be honest, like when we get into this before we go, thank you for tuning in, fellow conspiracy realists. We are well aware this can be a very sensitive, challenging topic

for a lot of people. It's inherently personal. You know, it's your own origin story. So I say we treat it with the care and respect it deserves, unlike you know, some of the doctors we're going to talk about. Does that sound good?

Speaker 4

Oh yeah, we certainly try to do that with everything we discussed, but this one is you're right, very sensitive because having children is something that is sort of a you know, a.

Speaker 3

Huge part of the human experience.

Speaker 4

If that's something that you want to do, and if you are not able to do that, it'll as you have to some potential fraudsters or people that can really manipulate you emotionally.

Speaker 3

Here are the facts if we want to understand this concept fertility fraud, which sounds like, you know, an evening news buzz term, because it is. We first have to understand the concept of fertility. Let's get that out of the way real quick. Fertility is being able to reproduce. And then there's this other thing which is part and parcel of our conspiracies this evening the concept of in vitro fertilization, or IVF as it's known on these streets. Yeah.

Speaker 2

In vitrue fertilization is one way a couple, no matter who they are, can attempt to impregnated if one of the people in that couple has a uterus. Right, And it's a really interesting process. And again it's only one. I think we should describe the other one first before we get to in vitro because there are several like types of this. I have personally gone through several. That's why it affects me personally, Guys, I've personally gone through

with the old ex wife. There several rounds of something called i UI, which is intrauterine insemination. That is where semen is taken from a host a dug owner. Yeah, in this case it was me, and it is put into a catheter type thing like a little turkey baster and then put into the person that has a uterus through the cervix and injected in there to attempt to impregnate.

Somebody went through that several times unsuccessfully. Hey, there's a little kid back there that that was made, which is kind of nice.

Speaker 3

That happened analog, in an analog fashion.

Speaker 2

Somehow, some miraculous way. Uh and uh yeah, but that that is one way. In vitro fertilization is quite a bit different though.

Speaker 3

Yes, yeah, you're right, and I appreciate you pointing that out, Matt. Uh. The inter uterine and in vitro things that you're talking about, these procedures, they're all they all come under the umbrella of what we call assisted reproductive technology or ART. Right, So it's our second acronym. Other there are other forms of ART. Uh. There there are always other forms of ART, Right. There's I c S I intro cytoplasmic sperm injection, there's

GIFT gammet uh intro Philippian transfer, there's ZIFT. It's it's a whole thing, and i've uh ART is UH. Let's think of it this way. It's a group term for a cavalcade of p and techniques which are all designed to create a viable embryo that will just state and become a life form. This also applies to non human animals, right. There have been this technology has been applied to certain endangered species. It's been applied to animals and conservatories or

preservations or zoos. But most people, when you think of ART, you're thinking of IVF. About ninety nine percent of the assisted reproduction technology in the United States today is IVF. This is coming from a release from the CDC in conjunction with Department of Human and Health Services or Health and Human Services from March thirteenth, twenty twenty four, where you'll see that IVF, per their research, represents the vast majority of ART procedures.

Speaker 4

And I think we were honestly all a little bit of surprised to see that stat It just seems like you can't get much higher than ninety nine percent, can you.

Speaker 2

Well, yeah, it's just weird to represent at least three versions of that one percent, if that makes sense. That's just weird in my personal experience.

Speaker 3

Yeah, And these things are not a silver bullet solution. To be absolutely clear, we know that this art is a relatively new concept in the grand scheme of things. You know. The first well IVF. The quick explanation is doctors will attempt to fertilize an egg with sperm outside of the uterus and then implant that egg into the uterus in hopes of a successful pregnancy. It does not have a one hundred percent success rate. And that's because the very first baby born from IVF is alive to

Louise Brown nineteen seventy eight. She's still relatively young, her middle aged.

Speaker 4

Yeah, and the next was born, or the next baby born of IVF came later that same year in India, and then before we knew it, this really was starting to become pretty widely adopted, at least for families of a certain social strata.

Speaker 2

Let's just say, yeah, it is an incredible procedure because it's almost like you set off that biological chain reaction right the moment you fertilize the egg in a laboratory setting in a peatrie dish basically, and that kind of thing it becomes us. I go, those cells start splitting, and then you've got to get that thing and implant it right within the uterus safely, and then for that to then go full term into a baby. That's incredible. That's an amazing technology.

Speaker 3

Guys.

Speaker 4

Is this it's probably a bit of a dated term and probably a bit derisive, but is this where the term tests two baby comes from?

Speaker 3

You're absolutely correct. The term test to baby, prominently featured in the amazing animated film Baby's Kids comes from comes from this. The rollout of this, which was quite quite accelerated because this was solving a problem that a lot of families struggled with, and a lot of individuals wanted to have children. It met a crucial need for people across the planet. Many of these people would prefer not to adopt. We'll do an episode on adoption in the

near future as well. But they knew they would be good parents, oh of course.

Speaker 4

And you know, another option might be surrogate situation or you have someone carry your baby to term with the sperm of the partner. That's certainly an option, also expensive and a little fraud in its own rights. Sure, But man, adoption, Ben, That's something that I've had questions and thoughts about for a long time, just all of the politics of that and when other countries get involved, and there's so much to unpack, and that I very much look forward to that.

Speaker 3

Conversation politics and pitfalls.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah, let's just get this out of the way too, you guys. Infertility is like one of the most soul crushing things you can deal with if you're if you actually want to have a child, do you feel like you would be okay parents or you're in the right place right or that thing for idiocracy at the very start of the film where it's like a couple. We talked about it multiple times on the show, but it's a couple that you know, has they they're thinking about

everything they need, like do we have enough money. Are we in a good place? Like what's going on in the world right now? A try doctors or lawyers or like successful intelligent humans and they're like, well, I guess it's time to try. But then you know one or both of them is infertile and they can't have a child. It's just very common again personal experience here, and it's it's it is like one of the one of the things that will send you down a real dark place in your life.

Speaker 3

You said, it's such a good human experience.

Speaker 4

It is part of being alive is to be able to you know, carry on your your legacy. Not not a thing about it in terms of like I've got to carry out my legacy or whatever, or be immortal in some way, but it is just the you want that you're driven towards that, especially if you're someone who

is capable of giving birth, that's like a superpower. And then to realize that you don't have that, you've been robbed of that, I can imagine, only imagine that it would be very exactly like you said, soul crushing.

Speaker 2

Again. It doesn't matter who you are, right or how you function or what parts you got. If you can't make another version of you genetically. It's that your biological imperative kind of gets muted or you know, turned off, or you're just not you don't your DNA n's at you, which is a weird thing to think about.

Speaker 3

Yeah, life is brutal and narcissistic from an evolutionary standpoint, it wants more of itself out there. I think both of you are making excellent points.

Speaker 4

I think the takeaway here though, is that it's not a narcissity desire to want to spread your DNA further. It's almost like there's a computer code within you that is programmed to need that and want that. It is like what you are designed to do. And when you can't do that, it's like you failed at that function or something.

Speaker 3

And then your body almost like you know, reacts or that has to reconcile that in some way. And obviously the point the mention of the inWORD of narcissism is not applying to anybody specific as an individual. It's the system. It is how life works. The virus right on the very edge of what humans consider living. Its main thing is to create more of itself. That is, that is the biological imperative right life is a light fighting against the darkness of entropy.

Speaker 4

It is funny, though I mean not maybe not funny when you do start to think about that biological imperative and how we as humans are kind of viruses and we self replicate and ultimately kind of smother everything around us, starting to turn into a dark, bummery direction.

Speaker 3

But you can look at it that way too, so it's not untrue. So infertility affects millions of people in the United States today, it affects billions of people in the world, and indeed we can see some troubling indications that infertility rates may rise depending on where you live in your neck of the global woods and what environmental factors you are exposed to. Big factors for infertility right now are going to be health conditions often caused by

environmental variables. And then there's going to be you know, the age is always a question. But to the earlier point, and I have family members within these situations. There are couples who are maybe same sex individuals, or there are people without a partner and they could not otherwise conceive, but they would be amazing parents and they are shout out, shout,

out to several of my family members there. I mean, the success of this is clear, the success of IVF in particular, in twenty twenty one, in the US alone, eighty six thousand, one hundred and forty six infants were conceived through the use of some sort of art assisted reproductive technology. That is two point three percent of all of the births in the entire country that year. That's a lot of people. And if you're listening, we're glad

you're here. If you're listening and you're like, what three years old.

Speaker 4

Yeah, welcome to Earth and to the podcast.

Speaker 3

Welcome to Earth. We would have cleaned it up if we knew you were on the way, probably not make it. Yeah, well, we could all do a little bits. It's not all on us. We do our best, we do our part. But no, this is really very very very true.

Speaker 4

The scientific breakthrough, you know, from the late seventies as continuing to help many many couples and individuals to do that thing that they so desperately want to be able to do, which is to spread life.

Speaker 3

And to the point about to the point about idiocrasy, Matt, I love that you're bringing that up, because people also use preservation services for their eggs the street freezing the eggs. Yeah, you can also save sperm or other reproductive tissue and say, hey, I really want to be a parent. I am not ready at this point, but they don't want to miss out on that opportunity. So this is a This is a huge industry. There's a lot of money inside of it. And right now there are ten states that use some

form of art most often. The last one was a bit of a plot twist on my end.

Speaker 4

Yeah, well, California obviously, New York, Sure, Texas, maybe, Okay, New Jersey, chechell Massachusetts, Florida, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3

Virginia, and Georgia. I mean, and I was surprised by that too.

Speaker 4

Is that because this is considered in some way like interfering with an act of God? Would there be a thinking behind this that maybe religious right leaning individuals and lawmaking might have a problem with this type of technology.

Speaker 3

I don't know, it's a good question. It may simply be a feedback loop of clusters of expertise, right because this is a specialization in the medical field. I mean, it's impossible to overemphasize the life changing importance of these treatments. A lot of us listening along tonight, our fellow conspiracy realist may have undergone IVF or maybe alive as a direct result of these techniques, which is amazing. We have to give tremendous thanks to all the doctors and medical

professionals who work to make this possible. I mean, imagine, imagine the enormity of trust that your patients are putting into you for this right be a part of the most important aspect of my life. If everything's above board, these doctors are making the world a better place, one family at a time. If everything's above board, what happens when that trust is misplaced? What exactly is the fertility fraud conspiracy? We're going to pause for a word from

our sponsors, and we're going to dive in. Here's where it gets crazy. Fertility fraud. It's real. It is extremely gross and unfortunately, just like art, it is an umbrella term for some unclean things. I had heard of this as a concept.

Speaker 4

It makes sense given especially says a lot of these things by very nature don't work out, even if it's all done above board, Even if everything is done correctly and with the utmost care, and you know, scientific rigor, very frequently, these pregnancies do not become viable. So therein lies the perfect opportunity for a grift. Right, Oh, it didn't work out, well, let's see just it's sorry. Maybe next time, let's try again.

Speaker 3

Jesus.

Speaker 4

But what we're about to tell you a bit of a trigger warning here you are. This is like some very gnarly abusive stuff we're about to talk about.

Speaker 3

Yeah, most commonly fertility fraud. When you're gonna hear it in popular culture or popular news, it describes how a fertility expert, a doctor with a specialization in this may lie to their patients. And they're overwhelmingly dude doctors. They lie to their patients and instead of giving the patient the sperm of their partner or the sperm you know, whatever the surrogacy situation may be, the doctor puts their

own sperm into the patient. It is impossible to overstate how disturbing of a violation this is.

Speaker 4

I don't understand why to what end? Like, why why would you do that?

Speaker 1

Is it?

Speaker 3

That?

Speaker 4

Is it?

Speaker 3

Just a psycho psychopathy? That's theopathy. Typically typically it's going to be a deletarious narcissistic disorder. The uh, the idea like, that's why we that's why we introduce the inward at the top there. Uh, these guys are propagating their own genes and not taking responsibility for their.

Speaker 4

Because like, on the one hand, it reminded me of some of those fraudulent crematoriums that would you know, just give whatever ashes back to the to the families and like like like like to me, I was thinking, this is some kind of shortcut to save you from having to do actual work. But it doesn't seem like it's that at all. It's literally like a secret rape, you know, and impregnation for your own malicious and and like you said, ben, narcissistic reasons. I just couldn't wrap my head around that

at first. But that's clearly what it is.

Speaker 2

Well, and there's there's levels to it too, because depending on the type of artificial insemination. Again, if you're just applying a you know, a batch of sperm cells to some eggs that are have been separated out from both bodies of whatever couple is, you know, attempting to become pregnant, that is a that is one thing. It's a whole other thing if you use the EUI technique where you're literally Turkey baseding your own own semen into a woman.

That is very different, I think, which is also something that has occurred.

Speaker 3

Both horrific and egregious. With that one is just well, they're both true. And fertility fraud can also additionally describe cases wherein donor eggs are taken or even sold without the donor's consent. But this would be a surgical procedure of some kind minimally yeah, minimally invasive, so you're not gonna have scars and stitches, you know, It's not at the level of, for instance, a cesarean section or something

like that. But there are other things that fall under the broad term fertility fraud, a lot of insurance grifts, a lot of unnecessary, expensive procedures because you can kind of milk people for money if you are a terrible doctor and they all leverage social engineering, how much do you trust your medical professional, and they explore the desire of so many people to become parents. Unfortunately, tragically, there aren't really words in English for how bad this is.

There are multiple examples of doctors engaging in these these unclean things. In the Nation of Isadel in two thousand, there were these doctors who were harvesting extra eggs from patients seeking fertility assistance, and then they were selling those eggs without the patient's knowledge or consent, much less a slice of the profit.

Speaker 4

And by the way, I just did a little googling, and the procedure to remove eggs it's minimally minimally invasive. It's like a needle that goes up and then it identifies where the follicles are and then it sucks them out with like sort of like a hollow needle, so it doesn't require being cut at all.

Speaker 3

So I could see how.

Speaker 4

You know, you could put one over on somebody and grab a few extras and keep them on the side. You know.

Speaker 3

It's yeah, yeah, as we said, minimally invasive, no scars. If you are the patient, you may not realize what has been done to you for some time, which makes even more dangerous. One of the most infamous recent examples of the doctors being monsters here comes to us from the Netherlands. A guy named doctor Jan Carbot may memory, May his memory be a curse. He's just the worst guy. From nineteen eighty all the way to two thousand and nine, he ran a clinic that was one of the biggest

fertility clinics in the entire country of the Netherlands. It was also a sider rampant fertility fraud. Nobody knew about this. We are not native Dutch speakers, so help, let's crowdsource this Bjdorp, Bijdor. You could be a soft j perhaps be Door.

Speaker 4

I don't know, just to thought. Yeah, yeah, it's roster thrown into the crowdsourcing here. It's near Rotterdam. Okay, yeah, I think probably a soft jay then and Berendrecht, as you said, near Rotterdam. In this clinic semen from different donners was is it called another callback to the ASHES situation mixed together?

Speaker 3

Oh god.

Speaker 4

Women were lied to about whose semen their child had been derived from, and record keeping was absolutely chaotic. Dare we say no rhyme or reason at all to any of the record keeping? Probably by design.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I would say non existent, because he was he was an active predator, covering his tracks. We know now that he is the direct biological father of at least forty nine children proven from patients who visited his clinic there in Rotterdam, and he used his own sperm instead of of the sperm that you know these couples were giving, right, we want to conceive in some cases like we've been married for years. Please help us, doctor Carbot, And he says sure, and then and then fertilizes the egg with

his own with his own emissions. And at this point, no one knows how many children this guy created as a result of his insane conspiracy. I don't use the word insane lightly. Everyone's certain though it's way more than forty nine. It's like a god complex kind of situation.

Speaker 2

Guys, really, let's really think about this. And hey, if you're listening with kids in the car, turn it off.

Turn it off for a little bit. Skip forward thirty seconds. Ready, this person masturbated himself forty nine times at least and separate times in a room somewhere, and then took that sample and then and had to put it into a like specialized cup to protect it, and then took that sample and did this procedure very carefully and very you know this, this is it is so monstrous when you think about that number of times, and those were the successful times that we know of that he did it,

which means he probably did that hundreds of times.

Speaker 3

At least he probably has about two hundred kids.

Speaker 2

Oh yeah, and this is one we're telling you one person that did this. There are over fifty other cases in the US of men who did the same thing, and we're gonna get to it. But this, this is one person that did it that many times. It's just like, it makes me want to do bad things.

Speaker 4

It seems like the same kind of compulsion that drives serial killers and like serial rapists, and it just seems very akin to that, and to be such a specific thing that you're just gonna do over an over again because you're chasing some kind of high from it or something.

Speaker 3

It's just oh man, So let's continue with the Carbot case because it is just like those US government numbers and infertility. This is a snapshot of, indeed a global pattern. Shout out to our friends at The Guardian. They have a great blow by blow investigation into this issue. If you want to learn more about the Carbot case in particular,

do check out. Dutch fertility doctors secretly fathered at least forty nine children from twenty nineteen, which is over four years ago now when it comes out they got a lot of this information with the help of a fantastic nonprofit group called Defense for Children, a global organization fighting for children's rights. Carbot did this for decades again, nineteen eighty all the way to two thousand and nine. This

didn't go public. It was kind of an open secret for a while, but it didn't go public until twenty nineteen. A Dutch court ruled that the results of Carbot's DNA tests, which he denied for the entirety of his life, should

be made available to parents and children with questions. The case involved twenty two people who had for a long time been petitioning Dutch courts to have their own DNA samples compared to that of their parents' fertility doctor, and Carbot for the entirety of his life managed to dodge this, refused to cooperate with investigators.

Speaker 2

We're going to get into this too, guys. But one of the reasons that it's been difficult to charge these doctors is because the laws in various places don't cover this specific act as something that is even illegal.

Speaker 3

Right before two thousand and four, Dutch quorts had up until two thousand and four before they reversed the decision in the Netherlands. If you were a child born to donors of any sort, you had no legal right to learn the identity of your biological parent. So if you are a I said it wasn't going to curse on today's episode, but this is so nasty. Paul, beat me here. If you are a monster, this is a perfect crime. Right if you are one of these, one of these Carbots.

Speaker 2

Well until you know twenty three and me another DNA like commercially part of the story here.

Speaker 3

It is so for a sense of scale, about ten thousand children were conceived at Carbots clinic over the lifetime its lifetime. Yeah, and we want to shout out the journalist Camille ba Luke spent three years investigating the case. He has published a book based on his research, which has a lot of interviews with doctor Carbot himself. It's called All Louis's Children and it's fantastically written. It's a real rough read. You can also if you want to save your time on the book, you can check out

on YouTube. Right now, you can check out an interview that Vice had with the journalist Beluke himself. What you'll see is disturbing. Doctor Carbot has no remorse whatsoever for his actions, which are clearly meditated. He is a he is a times nine thousand, this guy, and he had You might ask were there any consequences for him not in this.

Speaker 4

World, because you mentioned the law was at at the very least what you consider a loophole, and he was clearly very aware of that.

Speaker 3

And used it to his advantage, right, yeah, yeah, And just before the case goes to court, he dies. It's twenty seventeen, he's eighty nine years old. He never faced a mortal court. He also had already mentioned open secrets in interviews with journalists with his non consensual children. Well,

I guess every child is non consensually born. You know, it's fair, right, right, But you see what I'm saying that there would be people trying to track down their own providence, their own origin story, and they would find this guy at his home at the clinic, just walking around and they would say, hey, are you my father? And what he would do is how much of an open secret is? He would say, hold up your hands, and he would just compare hands with them because he

would never take a DNA test. It's so creepy.

Speaker 4

I imagine in the journalist the journalist's piece that you mentioned some of these children are that story as well.

Speaker 3

Yes, yeah, he has interviews with them and a couple are cided also in the Vice News summary the interview. And you know, maybe it's like a confirmation bias, but if you watch the if you watch the clips, you'll look at these folks and think are they related? Or am I racist? Do all Dutch people just look alike to me? But I think they look similar? And the DNA will later go to prove it. The worst part is, so this guy's never going to go in front of

a mortal court. He is also only one example of a troubling trend, and we have a lot more to discuss. As you set up earlier, Matt so Astuteley, there are many many people who have been doing this grift and getting away with it for a long long time. Should we take a break for a word from our sponsors, Yep,

we've returned. Even before the success and the economy of scale of IVF in nineteen seventy eight in England, there were people like Quincy Fortier or Fortier, a Las Vegas based fertility expert who during his forty year practice definitely created twenty six children without the consent of the women he was impregnating and just to drive home.

Speaker 4

These are all officially licensed physicians, right, They're not perpetrating fraud in.

Speaker 3

That aspect at least, right.

Speaker 4

This is like they're not running some fly by night, you know, pretending to be experts. That does happen, but in in these cases, these were all truly licensed doctors who had been through all the proper training.

Speaker 3

They just happened to be sick individuals. Yeah, and Quincy dies in two thousand and six. He's ninety four years old. People don't uncover the full extent of his crimes until twenty eighteen, when a lady is celebrating her retirement with a home DNA test and learns learns the truth. And then there's someone like to the point about there's something I know. I always rail against this, and I only

sound like a broken record because it is true. Technology always outpaces legislation, legislation reacts to technology, and as a result is always playing the game of catchup. Let's go to a guy named Cecil Jacobsen nineteen eighties, Virginia.

Speaker 2

Yeah, according to this guy, there's a bit of a problem where he worked. When someone came in a patient came in, wanted to get pregnant, wanted to have help getting inciminated. They would only have access to sperm that was frozen, and well that's not going to work. So this doctor decided, well, you would use his own. This is in the nineteen eighties. His practice ran from where are we nineteen seventy six until nineteen eighty eight, and he fathered as many as seventy five kids.

Speaker 3

Right yeah, and he could not and he was discovered he could not be prosecuted because he had operated this obscenity in Virginia entirely, and at the time there was no law in the Commonwealth of Virginia to prohibit this crime. Nobody thought anybody would be conceivably this messed up, you know what I mean. They had not conceived of the horror here. And we can go on and on. You know, there's Norman Barroway in Ottawa and twenty twenty one. We

could go on again. There's Donald Klein from seventy four to eighty seven, and we could go on like this.

Speaker 2

Let's name some more doctor Merle Berger in Sharon, Massachusetts, doctor Christopher Herndon, and doctor David Claypool in Washington. Doctor Paul Brennan Jones in Colorado, doctor John Boyd Coates, the third in Vermont, doctor Morris Mortman, and doctor as you said, Kleine in.

Speaker 3

Doctor Donald Clin. Yeah out. And then there there are further consequences like those post in Connecticut. Burton Caldwell may have well made, some made some folks unknowingly accidentally incestuous. It is important to know where you come from, right, And it is important like this is just ah, this

bothers me so much. We talk about so many evil things, but this one gets to me in particular because part of it is it is at this point virtually impossible to know just how many doctors successfully conducted these types of conspiracies. Right, Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 4

And you know one I thought was worth mentioning because it also involves that weird loophole in Dutch law.

Speaker 3

And I believe we discussed this a while back on.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 4

It was a dutch Man who is suspected of fathering more than five hundred children through excessive sperm donations. And I haven't seen an update yet as to what he's being held liable for, but he was facing a fine of more than one hundred thousand euros, but only if he tries to donate again. He's been banned from donated fertility clinics in the Netherlands, had been actually since twenty seventeen after it murdered that he had fathered more than

one hundred children. But instead of stopping, he just took it international, right, and he was actually tried.

Speaker 3

In the Hague, which is like where they try war criminals and stuff.

Speaker 4

It's kind of wild, but in the end, Yeah, looking like more than five hundred children, between five hundred and six hundred children. Since he began doing anything sperm in two two thousand and seven, all we know is his name was Jonathan.

Speaker 3

Yeah, and as of twenty twenty three, he was forty one years old. I remember bringing that to our Strange News program, and one thing that stood out to me about this was again the legislative lag let's call it that because if you're traveling internationally, I think he spent some time in Australia as well, it's difficult to track these activities. And he started donating sperm in two thousand

and seven. We have a short form social media video about it, which is sort of whistling in the graveyard of these evil, evil things, And I just want to say, like I I appreciate you guys so much for allowing us to bring that story to light back in our Strange News and for doing the sketch which does.

Speaker 2

Hold up that was your strange news story, right.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I'm just thank you for laying it on. Get on the air man.

Speaker 4

Actually, in the BBC article that I just found, it referenced a lot of these cases that we're talking about as well, because it is sort of like, well, this guy wasn't a doctor. It does show the flaws in Dutch law that led to this being possible.

Speaker 3

You're talking about Emily McGarvey, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is this is a real thing, and that's I love that you're bringing this up because that's adjacent to as he said, that's adjacent to this problem. The legislation is the issue, right There's we were talking a little bit off air before we recorded. I have been against the dangers of the commercialization of genetic testing for a long time.

It's going to be very challenging for human society and then year future and in the long term it's a whole other bag of badgers. But in this case, no matter what we think about the economy of scale, the monetization of DNA. This technology is the only reason we know about a lot of these crimes. Right, there is a good side. It is good that this stuff exists. But do you think that laws will be written to combat this?

Speaker 2

Yeah, there's Hr. Thirty seven to ten, the Fighting Fertility Fraud Act of twenty twenty three that's currently sitting with the House Committee on the Judiciary at the House of Representatives. It's just been sitting there since twenty twenty three in May.

I think it could potentially be a thing in the future, and there are other states like Texas that have passed laws that specifically characterize or classify fertility fraud as like a thing that can be prosecuted where you can actually go to jail four years for perpetrating these kinds of acts. I think ten years you could go one crime, so like one count a fertility fraud would be ten years in prison, which is awesome. Let's do that. It's just

kind of hanging out now though, in limbo. But thankfully there are other states that are trying to get things on the books like this, so hopefully that's in the future what we will see.

Speaker 3

Agreed, agreed, and that's what that's what we can do. We can hope we can raise awareness. We also have to say that, you know, this rank conspiratorial pattern leaves us with some serious things to consider as a civilization. It goes beyond national borders. The answer it's, I would argue, part procedural, part philosophical. There is some stuff that unscrupulous doctors don't want you to know, and they are getting away with it. They have been getting away with it.

I don't know, man. Just like on a positive note, you know this is hard for a lot of us to hear this evening, but family is family. We need to give a heartfelt thank you to all the parents out there who are raising their children well. Whether you are an adoptive parent, a biological parent, a step parent, it matters. Not Every child deserves a parent, deserves a family, and family can't be defined by biology alone. Let me get off this soapbox. This one got to me. Sorry, nice dude.

Speaker 4

I think you have to all this for various reasons, just human reasons. But also Matt, I appreciate you sharing your own personal story and you know connection to this topic.

Speaker 2

No, yeah, man, right on it. Sucks. It really sucks, really really sucks. Well, Hey, if you want to learn more about this stuff, and for some reason you have a morbid curiosity, maybe you can check out a couple of documentaries that exist on the internet right now. If you have Netflix, you can check out that one's Our Father, that's what is called Our Father. It's about doctor Donald Klein that we mentioned. And on HBO slash Max whatever that thing is now, I think it's called Max. You

can watch Baby God. That's about doctor Quincy Fortier.

Speaker 3

F O R T I E R and God Complex, right, I mean the name. Yeah. You can also again, if you want to learn more about the doctor from the Netherlands we spoke about specifically, do check out the book All Louis Children. We can't thank you enough, folks for tuning in. We want to hear your thoughts. Should there be more legislation prohibiting things like this? Right? Imagine committing a crime of such a heinous nature and the law is not able to prosecute you because they have never

articulated a law against it. What do you think is the solution? What are your personal experiences? We would love to hear from you. We try to be easy to find online. That's right.

Speaker 4

You can find us to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on Facebook, on YouTube, and on x fka, Twitter, on.

Speaker 3

Instagram and TikTok. We are Conspiracy Stuff show.

Speaker 2

Hey, do you like to call people? Why not call us? Our number is one eight three three std wytk. It's a three minute voicemail that you can leave only to three minutes. Give yourself a cool nickname and let us know in that message if we can use your message and name on the air. If you've got more to say than can fit in that three minutes, one out. Instead, send us a good old fashioned email.

Speaker 3

We are the folks who read every single email we get. Give us an essay, give us a haikup, give us a limerick, hashtag, no pun left behind. Take us to the edge of the rabbit hole. We will do the rest. Be well aware of folks. Sometimes the void writes back, how can you prove it? Reach out and touch space conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 2

Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,

Transcript source: Provided by creator in RSS feed: download file