In her desire to understand more about her family history, a teen discovered shocking details about her parents. The 18-year-old and her father are currently suing a Las Vegas fertility clinic for allegedly mishandling an IVF procedure.
In 2004, the teen’s parents went to Nevada reproductive C.A.R.E.S., a now-closed reproductive clinic which was under the direction of Dr. Rachel McConnell, and underwent IVF to develop an embryo using an egg donor of their choosing, according to the lawsuit obtained by Good Morning America.
The father thought that with the assistance of embryologist Dee Harris, the embryo was made using his sperm and a donor egg. The suit claims that an embryo was successfully implanted, and in October 2006, the wife gave birth to the couple’s daughter. The wife passed away in 2022.
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According to the complaint, McConnell and the defendants offered IVF services that were “clearly a departure from standard of care for IVF procedures,” resulting in “extreme and severe emotional upset” for the unnamed father and daughter.
The teen’s father informed her about the IVF therapy when she grew confused by the DNA results she obtained in October 2023 after relying on ancestry.com to discover more about her origins.
The findings indicated that the teen’s father is not her biological father, and the egg donor chosen by the couple is not the biological mother.
The daughter and her father said they discovered that she was the product of another embryo the doctor had made for a different couple.
The complaint indicated that the embryo generated by the father and the chosen egg donor may have been put in someone else.
The father is at present going through adoption proceedings to formally become his daughter’s father.
Per the lawsuit, “Because of the actions of Defendants, and each of them, [the father] was deprived of the opportunity to create life from his heritage as was promised and planned by Defendants.”
Though both father and daughter have chosen to remain anonymous, the law firm representing the father and daughter, Murdock and Associates, told ABC News in a statement, “The problem at the end of the day is that we believe that the meticulous protocols that should have been followed were not.”
