Sunshine & Secrets: The Hidden Side of IVF — BBC News Documentary

[0:02] Northern Cyprus, a stretch of land where big promises are made to those wanting children. [0:08] But are those promises too good to be true? [0:12] When James was born we expected him to have blue eyes and he didn't. [0:21] For years these parents lived with a secret fear. [0:25] I just knew that something wasn't right. [0:29] A fear which led to DNA tests. [0:33] Nothing could have prepared them for the results. [0:36] I was absolutely livid. [0:38] Something had gone very much amiss and what was that going to mean for the children? [0:44] It is the biggest fear of any IVF unit to mix up an egg or sperm or embryo. [0:49] Parents have told me they believe the wrong sperm and egg donors were used during IVF procedures [0:54] which led to the birth of their children and all of them were treated in Northern Cyprus. [1:00] Have loose rules and little regulation led to wrongdoing? [1:05] I don't want people to think that I need to have a baby that looks like me but I needed the truth. [1:11] I don't want to lie to my child about where they came from. [1:15] I'm Anna Collinson, an investigative journalist for the BBC. [1:19] Desperate, families have turned to me to see if I can find out the truth about their children's donors. [1:24] She's not going to engage is she? [1:30] We trusted these people and have we been really stupid? [1:34] How did you feel when you both saw your DNA results? [1:37] Upset. You can't just say someone's this and then they're not. [1:42] This investigation started with one family searching for answers. [1:48] So you two are about to find out whether your children are biologically related. [1:52] Just how far does this story go? [1:56] I just dread to think how many people, families, children are affected by what they've been doing. [2:12] Within a few years of meeting, Beth and Laura wanted to become parents. [2:16] But at that time, the same-sex couple found it difficult to find the fertility treatments they [2:21] wanted in the UK. So they looked abroad. [2:24] It was just a relief, wasn't it, to find a clinic in Northern Cyprus that was just very welcoming, [2:30] really easy to talk to and communicate with, a relief compared to our experiences in other places. [2:37] The two women needed a sperm donor to make their dreams of having children a reality. [2:43] What were you looking for in a donor? [2:45] We were going back 15 years and I know the LGBT community has progressed since then, [2:51] but at that time we did want them to look similar to us, so that was kind of one less thing [2:57] that would be questioned. [2:58] The couple's clinic, Doge IVF Centre, told them they could choose an anonymous sperm donor [3:04] from a Danish sperm bank. [3:07] As they browsed the sperm bank's website, one account stood out. [3:11] The profile was called Finn, has brown hair, which is straight, medium build, blue eyes. [3:18] We had his health history, but also the history of the family. [3:23] So it was just all together really reassuring, wasn't it? [3:26] Yeah, the key bit was that personal statement really, wasn't it? [3:31] It says, my motivation for becoming a donor is to help people to become parents. [3:36] As a parent myself, I know the hopes and doubts in early phases of parenthood [3:40] and the joy and happiness later on. [3:43] Beth and Laura would never meet this man. [3:46] Finn wasn't even his real name, but having this information brought them comfort. [3:51] And it would just be so nice for the children to look at that. [3:54] And just a sense of it being really nice. [3:56] A nice person who wanted to donate for the right reasons. [4:00] So it was really important that they had some sense of who he is. [4:05] Because that's half of them. [4:06] Yeah. [4:06] It's half their genetics, their sense of self, who they are. [4:10] Couple emailed their patient coordinator, Julie Hodson, who worked at Doge. [4:17] Beth and Laura had been so happy with their treatment at the clinic, [4:30] that when they wanted a second baby, they went back to the same IVF team. [4:35] They asked for Finn's sperm to be ordered again. [4:38] Their IVF journey cost them an estimated £16,000, [4:49] including £2,000 that Doge Clinic charged for Finn's sperm. [4:54] IVF is a fertility treatment where a woman's eggs are retrieved and then fertilised with sperm in a lab. [5:02] This can create an embryo, which is implanted in a woman's uterus and may develop into a baby. [5:07] For this family, the procedure worked twice. [5:13] Kate was born from one of Laura's eggs, which means Laura is her biological mum. [5:18] A few years later, James was born from one of Beth's eggs. [5:22] So he's biologically related to Beth. Donor Finn was meant to be used for both children. [5:29] He was the key link to ensure they would be biological half-siblings. [5:33] Don't have a dad. I've got two mums. [5:36] I'm not like everyone else, so fun to be different. [5:41] It's rare to hear from donor-conceived children, [5:43] but I've worked closely with Kate and James to ensure they were ready to share their story. [5:48] What my mum says is that my donor is Danish. I have the same donor as Kate. [5:55] They've always been interested and curious about that side, where they're from, haven't they? [6:01] Always been curious. Kate, when she was little, had always asked to go to Denmark. [6:05] She wants to see the country. What are the people like there? [6:10] Both of them have described themselves as, oh yes, I'm half-Danish. [6:14] James is particularly. He's very proud, isn't he? [6:16] When did you feel like something wasn't quite right? [6:21] So when James was born, we expected him to have blue eyes, and he didn't. [6:28] He's got beautiful brown eyes, but they're most definitely brown. [6:32] So that kind of rang a bit of an alarm bell. [6:35] Yes, we're both having the same kind of doubts, but I was super avoidant [6:40] and not really wanting to acknowledge it properly or talk about it for a long time. [6:47] After nearly a decade of uncertainty, they decided to do a commercial DNA test. [6:54] And then you said, well, should we get Kate tested at the same time? [6:56] And I was like, well, do we need to? [6:59] And you said, well, we might as well do. [7:02] They were sat right here when they viewed the results, which would change everything. [7:07] I was absolutely livid. [7:10] The test showed that James's ancestry on his paternal side was centred on Turkey [7:15] and other nearby countries. He did not appear to be related to Dona Finn. [7:20] And then we opened up Kate, expecting to see Scandinavian and British, [7:27] and hers was pretty similar to James's, but not the same as James. [7:32] Towards it looked like they weren't related. [7:34] The days afterwards, just shocked, weren't we? Shocked, angry, upset. [7:43] Very upset, very upset. [7:46] Beth and Laura couldn't believe their children might not be biologically related. [7:51] They went from knowing a lot about their donor to nothing at all. [7:55] What screening have they done for the donor in terms of health checks and everything else? [8:00] And also how many donations have they done? [8:04] The feelings of dread was very much around knowing something had gone very much amiss. [8:11] And what was that going to mean for the children? [8:16] Well, I've never heard of an incident like this in the UK. [8:20] It is the biggest fear of any IVF unit to mix up an egosperm or embryo. [8:25] It's important to say that there's nothing inherently wrong with what's called cross-border medicine, [8:29] and it happens quite a lot. [8:31] However, the moment you exit the shores of this country, [8:35] you rely on the local regulation of wherever you're having treatment. [8:39] Come and join us for our IVF appointment today in Cyprus. [8:47] Northern Cyprus is one of the most popular destinations [8:51] for British people seeking fertility treatment abroad. [8:55] In the UK, we were basically made to feel like there was no hope. [8:59] Clinics boast high success rates and low costs. [9:03] Roughly between £5,000 and £10,000, I would say, [9:07] is around the ballmark figure of what you would pay for treatment there. [9:11] Social media is full of people sharing their positive experiences. [9:15] We're here. It's happening. [9:18] Northern Cyprus is particularly popular with those who require a sperm or egg donor, [9:23] such as people with fertility issues and same-sex couples. [9:26] This is our IVF success story. [9:28] But we found other people online talking about a more disturbing side. [9:34] After they received their results, Beth and Laura turned to these sites [9:47] and were shocked to discover other families believe they too [9:51] have been given the wrong donors in Northern Cyprus. [9:53] I spent months reaching out to people on these forums. [10:05] Slowly, they started to engage. [10:07] They were angry and scared. [10:09] OK, so you're going to be playing a woman called Catherine. [10:13] Mm-hm. [10:14] This actor is telling one woman's story. [10:17] So I always thought that I'd find a nice man to settle down with, [10:21] but he never came. [10:22] And I was running out of time, so I decided to become a mum on my own. [10:28] I wanted to carry the baby, but I needed an egg donor and a sperm donor. [10:32] Her clinic presented her with a selection of egg donors to choose from. [10:36] They asked me for a load of selfies so they could find donors who looked like me. [10:40] As for the sperm, she was told to choose a donor from a Danish sperm bank, [10:49] which the clinic would then order for her. [10:51] When you have IVF in Northern Cyprus, all donors must be anonymous, [10:55] but patients can be given basic information about them. [10:59] Catherine chose donors from Western Europe, [11:02] with blonde hair, blue eyes and fair skin, like her. [11:06] I had a beautiful baby who I love with all my heart, [11:09] but I knew straight away something was wrong. [11:12] My child has dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin and looks nothing like me. [11:18] So I decided to do a DNA test. [11:21] When I got the DNA results, they were like, this is your child's father. [11:26] But that man was not the sperm donor she had selected. [11:29] It was her child's real sperm donor, who by chance was registered on the DNA test database. [11:35] And the egg donor didn't appear to be the woman Catherine had selected either. [11:40] I don't want people to think that I'm shallow, [11:43] like I need to have a baby that looks like me. [11:46] Having my child was, you know, one of the best things I could have wished for, [11:50] but I needed the truth. [11:53] I don't want to lie to my child about where they came from. [11:58] Catherine raised her concerns with her clinic, [12:00] but they reassured her that she'd been given the donors she'd asked for. [12:06] Northern Cyprus is only legally recognised by Turkey, [12:09] and EU law does not apply there. [12:12] It has its own fertility laws, [12:13] and it's the job of the Northern Cyprus Ministry of Health to monitor clinics. [12:18] But unlike the UK, Northern Cyprus does not have an independent fertility regulator, [12:22] who upholds standards. [12:26] Back in the UK, Dr. Ipocrates Sarris is one of Britain's leading IVF specialists. [12:31] He says a lack of regulation can mean cheaper prices, [12:36] and controversial treatments being available, [12:38] such as sex selection for non-medical reasons. [12:41] But at what cost? [12:42] So the purpose of the regulation in the UK is to ensure that there's trust between [12:47] patients and clinicians, which effectively means checks and balances. [12:51] Can we witness this, please? [12:52] So, Minnie Mouse. [12:54] Minnie Mouse. [12:55] Two members of staff have to monitor every movement of eggs, sperm and embryos. [13:00] These kinds of checks should eliminate mix-ups in the lab. [13:03] You mind witnessing me? [13:05] Yep. [13:05] So how could the wrong donor possibly be given to multiple families? [13:10] If we take away the potential for error accidentally, [13:14] which I hope I have stressed that that shouldn't happen, [13:18] then really then we're only left with intent, [13:20] which means that on purpose things were not used as they should. [13:24] Of course, I can't comment any motivation as to why one would want to do that. [13:29] Kate and James have now had two years to process the news about sperm donor fin. [13:36] How did you feel when you both saw your DNA results? [13:39] It didn't really make a difference. [13:41] It's just who I am. [13:43] It's not like I can change it. [13:44] I'm upset. [13:46] They said that I'm Danish when I'm not. [13:49] They said I'm also related to cake, which I'm not, gladly. [13:53] It's not like saying, oh, this person eats a lot of chocolate cake. [14:00] They don't. [14:01] Yeah, they don't. [14:02] That doesn't really matter a lot. [14:05] But identity is the main thing. [14:11] It's who you are as a person, really. [14:16] What impact could finding out new information about a person's donor have on them? [14:21] It can have quite a significant impact because obviously you've built your whole story, [14:25] your whole sort of foundation on something that ends up not being quite right. [14:29] I think the advantage, even in that scenario, is that the parents and children are on the same page. [14:36] It's them together that have been misled or lied to. [14:41] So I've been investigating this story for a year now, and I've spoken to the families of seven [14:48] children who believe they were all given the wrong donors during their IVF treatment in northern [14:53] Cyprus. [14:54] So what all of these unfortunate mistakes or have these families been deceived [14:59] about who their children's real donors are? [15:02] What we do know is that three of these children, Kate, James and Catherine's child, [15:08] were all born after their parents requested sperm from the world's largest sperm bank, [15:13] Cryos International in Denmark. [15:16] You will be transferred to the first available employee. [15:21] Beth and Laura tried to find out from Cryos if their clinic had ordered Finn's sperm for them. [15:25] We know now that the donor that was used is not the one that we asked for. [15:30] So we'd be really grateful if we could check your records that they actually did place the order for us. [15:35] But they were told they couldn't be given the information because Beth and Laura didn't order the sperm themselves. [15:41] I guess my question would be, I got the same response when I spoke to the CEO. [15:46] Of course, if they are the customers, we can release everything. But if the clinic is the customer, we can't. [15:53] So I'd like just to talk to you a bit about our story that we've been working on. [15:58] I explained what I'd found out so far about families possibly being given the wrong sperm donors. [16:04] Does that sound like an error that's been made at Cryos's end, do you think? [16:07] It may be unlikely. We have so many security processes in force. [16:13] They have to present a safe ID that could be passport or driver's license. [16:19] But it's human. We can do as many security issues as we can, but it will never give it 100% security. [16:30] There will not be a contamination or mix-ups. [16:33] So I've never seen it and it has never been documented. [16:38] So there's clinics in Greece who have claimed that they get the sperm from Cryos, but it's not true. [16:44] We have never delivered to them. [16:45] This is the family's suspicion that they were told the sperm was going to come from Cryos, [16:51] and that it was never ordered. [16:53] I can't guarantee, but it's most likely not us who have done a fall, so it's probably the clinic. [17:00] Several clinics are involved in this story, but one thing I have noticed is that [17:04] the parents of four of these children all had IVF under the care of the same doctor. [17:14] Dr. Fedev Uga's tip claims to make the seemingly impossible possible for those who are desperate [17:20] to become parents. Over the past 15 years, she's treated patients at three clinics, [17:26] and in an industry where success rates are everything, she boasts exceptionally high numbers [17:32] and promises a vast array of donors from all over the world. [17:36] What were your initial thoughts of Dr. Fedev's? [17:39] She just seemed really friendly, really open and just wanted to help us. [17:46] Yeah, she seemed very nice. [17:48] The families of the four children treated by Dr. Fedev's all did commercial DNA tests. [17:54] A leading genetics expert has told me it's unlikely any of them got the donors they asked for. [17:59] Dr. Fedev's denies any wrongdoing. She also says that it's not possible to conclude with certainty [18:06] that the wrong donors have been used based solely on the family's commercial DNA tests. [18:14] These tests are described as reliable and robust, but they don't stand up in a court of law. [18:19] So Beth, Laura and the children have decided to do a second accredited test. [18:24] This will definitively answer whether Kate and James are biologically related, [18:29] and whether they come from the same sperm donor, which their parents explicitly asked for. [18:34] Catherine went to a different clinic to Beth and Laura. [18:43] Her treatment was at Miracle IVF, which Dr. Fedev's set up in 2019. [18:48] When Catherine was choosing her anonymous egg donor, she was presented with these profiles. [18:54] And they actually contain quite a lot of information. [18:56] You've got heights, weights, hair colour, eye colour, hobbies, professions. [19:03] But Dr. Fedev's told me that she does not provide patients with egg donor profiles, [19:07] which describe, and I quote, a specific person. [19:11] But these all look like very real individual women. [19:14] Dr. Fedev says the choice of the donor is made exclusively by the clinic, [19:21] and that every patient signs an extensive informed consent form before treatment. [19:27] She also told us that her clinic never provided a guarantee about the donor's ethnicity. [19:32] I shared this with Catherine. [19:36] They shouldn't give people choices if they don't actually have them. [19:40] Where did they get the donor eggs from? [19:42] Were you ever told that your clinic would have final say on who your donor was? [19:47] No, never. I remember signing a document around my treatment, but it's all a bit of a blur. [19:53] They just made me initial every page, and yeah, it was all very rushed. [19:59] Dr. Fedev says all treatments carried out by her at Miracle IVF are done so in accordance [20:05] with local legislation. [20:08] Dr. Fedev says their sperm is always procured from an accredited sperm bank. [20:12] Yeah, but I still didn't get the sperm donor that I requested. [20:15] I feel awful saying this because I love my child unconditionally, but I would never have agreed [20:20] to the treatment had I known that I wasn't going to get the donors that I'd selected. [20:26] Dr. Fedev says she was unable to answer all of our questions regarding Catherine's treatment [20:31] due to patient confidentiality. [20:33] It's likely Catherine will never know what happened. [20:36] While they wait for their second set of DNA results, family life continues. [20:45] A bit crispy, these. [20:46] Dr. Fedev is now claiming she did not perform any IVF procedures during the time Beth and Laura [20:52] were patients at Doge Clinic, though I've seen evidence which strongly suggests that's not true. [20:59] It's a further blow for Beth and Laura, who often worry about what happened during their treatments. [21:05] So they had both of our eggs collected and then put them into storage. [21:10] So what happened to those eggs? Have they been used for other people? [21:14] Kate and James, is there a scenario where they could have a full biological sibling out there [21:21] and then our own children are not related to each other? [21:25] Doge IVF Centre has not responded to our requests for comment. [21:30] We know that their former patient coordinator, Julie Hodson, was the one who took Beth and Laura's [21:35] sperm donor orders. She told them Dr. Fedev's would process them, but Dr. Fedev's claims that she was [21:42] not responsible for donor procurement and no information about the request for donor Finn was passed on to her. [21:48] I've tried speaking to Julie Hodson many times. [21:54] Your voicemail. [21:57] She's not going to engage, is she? [22:00] The problem is, is if Julie doesn't engage, we can never be 100% sure whether Dr. Fedev's made that order, [22:08] because she was the one that passed that message on. Or did she? You might never know. [22:12] For months, I've repeatedly tried to speak to people in Northern Cyprus. The Ministry of Health, MPs, lawyers, [22:22] fertility specialists, and it's been mostly silence. [22:26] The fertility industry in Northern Cyprus, it's important for the economy. [22:32] You can find fertility clinics across the island in abundance. [22:35] It's abnormally high and intense for an island so small. [22:43] Mine Atli has spent years raising awareness about fertility scandals in Northern Cyprus, [22:48] where she lives. She claims some clinics offer money to vulnerable young people for their eggs [22:55] or sperm, though she won't name any specific clinics. And there's no evidence that the clinics [23:00] we've mentioned have done this. [23:01] We have a country with a very high student population. A large portion of them come [23:08] from developing countries. So they're looking for ways that they can sustain their studies. [23:13] And so with that huge need on one hand, when a demand for things like eggs or sperm arises, [23:23] you can see how they naturally complement one another. [23:29] She says doctors and clinics are rarely held accountable if they commit any wrongdoing. [23:34] I'm sure there are clinics who work brilliantly, who follow the laws, [23:38] but I can say that this is related to the fact that the people who run those clinics have a conscience. [23:45] And I don't think it's something that they are forced to do by the state. [23:49] It's results day. Beth and Laura have come to find out whether their children are biologically related. [23:59] I've got your results here. There's one each. They're exactly the same. [24:04] This forensics genetics professor has been carrying out relationship tests for 50 years. [24:09] So it says, considering the genetic information, the results provide very strong support to the proposition [24:20] that Kate and James are unrelated. [24:23] Is there any possibility whatsoever in your mind that they might be related? [24:29] No, because the strength of the evidence is such that I don't believe that I would never see anything like that. [24:37] But I did calculate, you know, what's the sort of chance that I've made an error? [24:43] And it turned out it was less than 0.0001%. [24:49] I think that's good enough for us. [24:51] If there's always going to be questions with the test that we've used before, is it robust enough? [24:57] Can you be certain? At least now we can be certain, can't we? [25:01] Yeah. [25:01] It's a terrible thing, in my opinion. What has been done? [25:06] We can come out of this saying, yes, we're still a family and that's more important than DNA, can't we? [25:12] But that doesn't take away from what the clinic has done that is so morally and ethically wrong. [25:18] Your story will protect some others. [25:21] Yes, I think that's it. If somebody else goes into it with their eyes open, [25:24] that they know that this has happened before, they can be aware of it and be more careful. [25:29] Beth and Laura will now go home to tell the children. [25:37] Although it's still possible the clinic made a mistake, they're even more convinced they were deliberately deceived. [25:49] This story goes beyond one doctor and several clinics. [25:53] I've spoken to other families who say they've been given the wrong donors at other places in northern Cyprus. [25:58] And I've heard bigger concerns about the egg and the sperm donor trade around the world. [26:03] Of all the industries that there are, surely the one that is creating life is the most important [26:10] one to be really having full attention on, to make sure it's being done properly. [26:15] You know, this is a human being that's being created. It's not just a widget in a factory. [26:20] And that human being has rights. They will have views and opinions and needs. And we need to be really [26:26] respectful of that and make sure it's done absolutely always to the best of our ability. [26:32] Oh my God, look at me. I'm just adorable. [26:35] It has been a difficult journey and will probably continue to be in some ways. [26:42] Biologically related or not, this is a loving family. [26:46] You have to remember, if they hadn't have done whatever they did, [26:50] then we wouldn't have Kate and James because they wouldn't exist. [26:52] We have two amazing children and yeah, that's not going to change. [26:59] Finding out this information doesn't change us as a family. It doesn't change how they feel about each other. [27:04] So difficult conversations. Yes, they're hard, but at the end of it, everyone will be okay. [27:15] Dr Furdev's claims any responsibility regarding Beth and Laura's case lies with the doctor who was in [27:21] charge of Doge IVF Centre at the time of their treatment. These allegations have been put to Doge [27:26] several times, but they've not replied. Responding to Catherine's case, Dr Furdev says all treatments [27:33] carried out by her at Miracle IVF Centre since 2019 were in accordance with local legislation. [27:39] The Northern Cyprus government has confirmed it's now investigating whether these clinics breach laws [27:45] and regulation. [27:50] This is a