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Research dossier · Science & Nature

Fertility fraud

fraud in fertility medicine

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ111952068 ↗
Source-derived summary

Fertility fraud is the failure on the part of a fertility doctor to obtain consent from a patient before inseminating her with his own sperm. This normally occurs in the context of people using assisted reproductive technology (ART) to address fertility issues.

The term is also used in cases where donor eggs are used without consent and more broadly, in instances where doctors and other medical professionals exploit opportunities that arise when people use assisted reproductive technology to address fertility issues. This may give rise to a number of different types of fraud involving insurance, unnecessary procedures, theft of eggs, and other issues related to fertility treatment.

Types

The main sense of fertility fraud is non-consensual insemination of a patient by her doctor, but there are other types as well.

Egg theft

The first "test tube baby" was facilitated by Robert Edwards in 1978, and he allegedly used eggs without the consent of the women involved.

One of the earliest cases involving egg theft occurred in 1987 in Garden Grove, California, in a clinic run by doctor Ricardo Asch, and his partners doctors Sergio Stone and Jose Balmaceda. Asch took eggs from women undergoing diagnostic procedures and used them in fertility procedures in other women.

Asch and his two partners were accused of taking eggs and embryos from patients without their consent, using them to cause pregnancies in other women, and defrauding insurance companies. The eggs of at least 20 women were used, and at least fifteen live births resulted.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Fertility fraud” as fraud in fertility medicine. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical orientation to terminology and classification, particularly when read beside dated observations, specimens or technical literature. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1978, 1987—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Fertility, fraud and fertility can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as fraud in fertility medicine. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q111952068. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1978 and 1987.

Critical limits

A general summary may omit uncertainty, sample limits or methodological disagreement that is explicit in the technical record. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Check terminology, classification and the date of the cited evidence. Scientific names and technical consensus can change while older records retain historical value.

Best used for
  • Current terminology
  • Classification context
  • Finding cited technical literature
Verify next

Primary datasets, specimen catalogues, standards bodies and the most recent peer-reviewed literature.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Fertility fraud”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Fertility fraud primary sources, Fertility fraud archive and Fertility research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Fertility fraud”?
  2. Has classification or technical consensus changed since the cited source?
  3. Is the terminology current, historical or disputed?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Fertility fraud” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.