Brit man 'fathered 600 children' with own sperm at family's fertility clinic

London, Apr 9 (ANI): A British man is believed to have fathered 600 children by repeatedly using his own sperm for women to conceive babies, at the fertility clinic he ran with his wife.

Bertold Wiesner and Mary Barton founded the London clinic in the 1940s and helped women conceive 1,500 children.

It was thought that the clinic used a small number of highly intelligent friends as sperm donors but it has now emerged that around 600 of the babies were conceived using sperm from Wiesner himself.

Two men conceived at the clinic - Barry Stevens, a film-maker from Canada and David Gollancz, a barrister in London - have researched the centre and DNA tests suggest Wiesner, an Austrian biologist, provided two thirds of the donated sperm.

Such a practice is outlawed now but at the time it was not known that Wiesner was providing the majority of the samples.

The same sperm donor should not be used to create so many children because of the risk that two of the offpsring will unwittingly meet and start a family of their own, which could cause serious genetic problems in their children.

DNA tests were conducted on 18 people conceived at the clinic between 1943 and 1962. The results showed that two thirds of them were fathered by Wiesner himself.

Extrapolating this to the rest of the children conceived at the clinic it would suggest around 600 of the children were his.

"A conservative estimate is that he would have been making 20 donations a year," the Telegraph quoted Gollancz as telling the Sunday Times.

"Using standard figures for the number of live births which result, including allowances for twins and miscarriages, I estimate that he is responsible for between 300 and 600 children," he said.

Around 2,000 children are born every year in Britain using donated eggs, sperm or embryos.

All sperm donors used by regulated clinics should be between the age of 18 and 41 and all samples are tested for diseases.

Information about the donor is kept secret and the children can apply to find out the identity of their biological father and any half brothers or sisters once they turn 18. (ANI)