Everything was discovered in a meeting between friends. At the meeting there was a couple from Cadiz, parents of a child born in 2021 through assisted fertilization, and one of the attendees questioned the child’s paternity. “It’s just that he doesn’t look like his father at all”, he exclaimed.
The matter could have ended there, but days after this meeting, another acquaintance of the couple pointed out a quick and simple formula to get rid of doubts. Compare the child’s blood group with those of his mother and father. The result? The minor’s blood type is “completely incompatible” with that of the parents.
Then – a couple of weeks ago – the results of a DNA test arrived. The child is the daughter of the mother (her ovum was indeed used in the in vitro fertilization) but not of what until now she believed to be her father. In the treatment, therefore, a sperm from another man, currently unknown, was used.
This is how this unusual story began to be written, according to Ignacio Martínez, a lawyer representing the parents, who reveals at this beginning of the narrative “a serious medical negligence”. But many chapters remain to be written. And look for the answer to countless questions.
How could such a serious mistake be made? Whose sperm (the child’s father) was used in the fertilization? Did the sperm delivered by the mother’s partner end up in another woman’s egg?
Ignacio Martínez, lawyer of the Patient Advocate Association, told this newspaper yesterday that “we now want to clarify how an irreparable and proven damage has taken place, such as the use in the fertilization of the sperm of a another man, even though the mother’s partner had given his semen”. If the story has more fronts “it will be seen in the future”, adds this lawyer.
The first dilemma for this family has come when it comes to pricing the compensation claimed for this mistake. There are very few precedents and to fix this request of one million euros to the Andalusian Board – in a lawsuit through the administrative route – similar cases were taken into account, reveals the couple’s lawyer ( although they are not the same) for baby exchanges in Logronyo and Pamplona. In these matters the administrations were willing to pay compensations of up to 800,000 euros.
“Fixing an amount for such a serious mistake is not easy – points out Ignacio Martínez – since here the damage caused goes beyond the pain caused to the partner, because the child may want to know, if they explain to him what has happened when he is an adult, who is his father”. And another doubt, now unresolved, that creates anxiety in the couple: where did the semen sample that the man who wanted to be a father gave end up?
“We wanted an investigation to be opened in case this matter is not an isolated incident.” The strategy has worked. From the Department of Health of the Board of Andalusia it is reported that the case is already being investigated “to get to the bottom of the matter” and determine the origin of the error – human or protocol – to take measures .
An announcement that yesterday coincided with a news item from Canal Sur Cádiz that talks about another error at the same hospital (Puerta del Mar) also in an assisted fertilization process. On this occasion the baby was not born.
