"Incomprehensible" called Piet-Hein Buiting what he had to announce on Tuesday on the website of the hospital he manages in Den Bosch: A former employee had used his own sperm for artificial insemination four decades ago, not that of the donor who was actually was intended.

"This damages the patient's trust and has a major impact on the donor child," Buiting said in a video message.

Thomas Gutschker

Political correspondent for the European Union, NATO and the Benelux countries based in Brussels.

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The manager announced an investigation and called on unsettled people to contact the hospital.

The gynecologist stated that he used his sperm "a few times".

He worked in the relevant department for a total of eight years.

It is the fourth case that has caused a stir in the Netherlands.

Just last week, the Alrijne Hospital in Leiden revealed that a gynecologist, who has since died, was the father of at least 21 children who had been conceived there by artificial insemination until the mid-1980s.

The now adult persons had become suspicious after a case from Zwolle became known last year in which a reproductive doctor had fathered at least 47 children.

As early as 2017, it was revealed that a gynecologist at his Zwolle clinic, which specializes in artificial insemination, had once sold sperm that allegedly came from anonymous donors but was in fact his own.

The doctor turned out to be the father of at least 70 children during the DNA comparison.

Legal regulations

In this first case, the artificially conceived children still had to fight for the genetic comparison in court.

It's a lot easier now.

The DNA profile of the affected physicians was fed into a database that can be used to find out who the donor children are from.

They have been entitled to do so since a change in the law in 2004.

The so-called KID register is managed by a foundation.

On Tuesday it was read on their website that the gynecologist concerned had used his own sperm for three other inseminations.

However, it is unclear "whether children were born from it".

In the case of the first three gynecologists, the question of possible criminal consequences did not arise because they had already died when their paternity came to light.

Although this is different in the most recent case, the hospital itself pointed out that in the early years of artificial insemination there were “no legal regulations on donor conception”.

It was "medically and ethically wrong" to use your own seed without informing your parents and asking for permission.

The hospital in Leiden argued similarly.

The situation is now completely different, it said.

"We follow national protocols and work carefully." This is checked regularly.

Socially frowned upon

The clinical gynecologist Max Curfs, who worked up the case in Zwolle, told the newspaper "de Volkskrant" that there were hardly any files from that time, they were often destroyed.

He also pointed out that sperm donations were frowned upon in society.

"Don't tell anyone that your child has another biological father!" - that was the starting point.

At first only married women were treated anyway, whose husband was sterile or at least could not conceive a child naturally.

There were no uniform standards on how sperm donations were registered.

Internal control was often lacking because the gynecologists performed the procedures themselves instead of working in teams.

The gynecologist Curfs said that the behavior of the doctors could not be justified, but also campaigned for understanding.

It could be that Jan Wildschut, whose case he was investigating, thought in some cases that a pregnancy would not have come about through a sperm donation from the spouse.

"Maybe he was just sensitive to the suffering of having a child."

Some parents were angry when they later learned of the doctor's paternity, others said they owed their child to him.

"By one-dimensionally dismissing such a person as a crook," Curfs said, "you are violating the children's right to exist."