Doctors at the Moscow clinic cooperated with the woman’s request.

A Russian man has successfully sued an IVF clinic in Moscow after his wife secretly had his sperm swapped for a lover’s during an IVF procedure.

Maxim Anokhin and his wife Yana Anokina, 38, approached doctors at Kulakov Medical Centre in Moscow to receive IVF last year. While she underwent IVF treatment, Anokina arranged with a fertility specialist to have her husband’s sperm swapped without him knowing. Anokina had reportedly told the clinic she wanted the man she loved to be the father, but had let her husband pay for the treatment and kept him in the dark for the child’s first year.

Anokina only revealed the truth to her husband after their relationship went sour. The two are now in new relationships, but Mr Anokhin has sued the clinic that allowed for the secretive exchange to take place.

DNA tests proved that Mr Anokhin was not the father. Mr Anokhin's lawyer Olga Nemtseva said the clinic had a duty to her client and could not solely follow the wishes of his wife. The court found that clinic staff assisted the woman in swapping the sperm, and Mr Anokhin was awarded approximately US$6000 in compensation for his moral and financial damages.

The doctor involved in their case, Liya Kazaryan, mentioned in the lawsuit, has refused to speak in detail.

“I am not giving any interviews… I do not want to say a word on this matter,” she said.

But asked how a man could be certain he was the real father, she laughed: 'Only a woman can be sure”.

Anokhin said that the case was not about money, but about justice. He told reporters that he hoped that no men in the future were deceived as he had been.

Man discovers that partner had sperm swapped for lover’s during IVF
Creative commons
https://www.bioedge.org/images/2008images/IVF_clinic.jpg
ivf
professional misconduct
reproductive revolution
russia

• Author
• Recent Posts

Xavier Symons

Xavier Symons is a bioethicist and scholar in residence at the Kennedy Institute for Ethics at Georgetown University.

Latest posts by Xavier Symons (see all)

• Can machines be moral? - March 7, 2021
• Can we synthesise Christianity moral theology with secular bioethics? - November 28, 2020
• Euthanasia polling data may fail to capture people’s considered views - August 15, 2020