Program: Another IVF mix-up exposed

Sam Hawley: Every year, tens of thousands of Australian couples turn to IVF to start or grow a family. But is it an industry that can be fully trusted, given recent revelations of embryo and sperm mix-ups and women giving birth to strangers' babies? Today, ABC journalist Grace Tobin on her latest investigation into one couple's fraught experience and why the rules need to change. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Grace, you've been investigating the fertility industry for quite some time now. And recently, there's been quite a lot of scandals. You've uncovered another shocking case of an IVF mix-up. So just tell me about that because there was a cover-up too.

Grace Tobin: Yes, that's right, Sam. So my latest investigation, it revolves around a couple in Brisbane who underwent IVF 12 years ago in 2013. Now, they needed to use donor sperm and so they chose a donor who matched the husband's features. He was a white man with fair hair and blue eyes. And then they created embryos at this clinic's Brisbane centre using the woman's eggs and donor sperm imported from an American sperm bank. Now, it wasn't until the birth that they immediately realised that there must have been some kind of mix-up. At the time, the mother described her baby in an online post in a forum as being biracial and she spoke about being worried as to whether the baby was biologically hers. Yeah.

Mother's social media posts: Has anyone ever found out their IVF baby wasn't theirs? Has anyone had a baby that looked like it came from a different ethnicity? This is a genuine question. I love my beautiful baby more than life itself. DNA test is off being processed.

Grace Tobin: And so she started asking the clinic questions.

Sam Hawley: Wow, OK. So why are we only hearing about this case now, so long after the fact?

Grace Tobin: Well, it's been really difficult to find out exactly what happened because the couple involved was gagged by the company with a strict non-disclosure agreement and that still has them terrified of speaking out today. But not only that, the fertility clinic kept this incident a secret for 11 years and it went to great lengths to do this, to keep it buried. But I've been able to speak with multiple sources and I've cited secret company reports and that's helped us piece together what happened.

Sam Hawley: OK. So then tell me more about what did actually happen.

Grace Tobin: Well, as I said, this was a Brisbane couple. They were patients of the Queensland Fertility Group. Now, that's owned by IVF giant Virtus Health, which is actually the biggest fertility company in Australia. I met with a family friend of this couple called Jo Bastian and she found out what happened to them before the NDA was signed. She told me that the couple were having fertility issues and decided to use a sperm donor.

Jo Bastian, family friend: They chose a donor that obviously had all the attributes of the father. He's a tall Caucasian male, so there would have been hair colour matched, eyes. And then once the child was born, they found that the child didn't really look Caucasian. The child was darker skinned. So the questions were asked.

Grace Tobin: Now, I found that an internal investigation revealed the error occurred at one of Virtus Health's US sperm providers, the Seattle Sperm Bank, with video footage actually confirming two men had donated on the same day and their donor profiles described one as Caucasian and the other as African-American Nigerian. But their samples were mixed up.

Sam Hawley: Oh my gosh. Okay, so Grace, now let's have a look at how this could have actually happened because surely there are checks and balances in place to stop this sort of mix-up.

Grace Tobin: Well, the reality today and for many years has been that many Australian IVF clinics use imported donor sperm because there's a dire shortage of donors locally. And I guess what's clear in this case is that Queensland Fertility Group and Virtus Health didn't actually do their due diligence before exposing their Australian patients to potential mix-ups because there are different standards between what happens here in Australia and the US. So an internal investigation after this incident that we got hold of revealed that a crucial identity check known as double witnessing was non-existent during collections at this US sperm bank.

Sam Hawley: I'm assuming double witnessing is a rather important part of the process.

Grace Tobin: That's right. Well, it's actually been industry standard here in Australia since 2012 as well and it's basically just a safeguard process where clinicians double check the details of a patient or an individual that's going through the IVF procedure and that would include sperm donors. So the person that is actually conducting and performing a procedure or a check, they will then call a witness to make sure that there's no mistake happening.

Sam Hawley: So what's the Seattle Sperm Bank done since it realised this error occurred?

Grace Tobin: Well, there was an internal audit there as well and the sperm bank conducted DNA testing to confirm what had happened. The Seattle Sperm Bank told us that since the mix-up, it's created a robust seven-step double verification to prevent this type of error from occurring again. And Queensland Fertility Group also told us that all remaining donor sperm from this donor was destroyed here in Australia. But I guess within the Australian IBF industry more generally, using the wrong sperm to create a baby, that is classified as a severe notifiable adverse event and it must be immediately reported to the industry regulator. That's the Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee or RTAC for short. The regulator actually told us that this wasn't the case because at the time, there was no requirement to actually report it. So that's changed now and in fact, the industry code of practice changed only two months after Queensland Fertility Group say they became aware of this error. And even though investigations took place after that fact, there was still no requirement for them to tell the regulator anything. So it really does show how poorly regulated this industry has been historically. Now, Virtus Health denies that its former board and management engaged in a cover-up even though the couple were silenced. And also as a publicly listed company at the time, Virtus Health had disclosure obligations to its shareholders, which it also didn't do.

Sam Hawley: Okay, so just to make this clear, the regulator in Australia didn't know about this mix-up, which is in itself extraordinary.

Grace Tobin: That's right. So they're saying the code of practice at the time didn't cover this incident.

Sam Hawley: So what did the Australian-based company do to make sure that this sort of mix-up didn't happen again?

Grace Tobin: Well, you would think that they would have been at pains to make sure that nothing like this could ever happen again. But unfortunately, we discovered inside Virtus Health very little change to address the risk of another devastating mix-up for some years. So six years after this secret was buried, a further audit was done and that discovered that four of the company's international sperm providers were classified as high risk for mix-ups because there was still no evidence of double witnessing occurring in those labs. Now, there was also one Australian clinic as part of Virtus Health that was also failing to do these important checks and that was Queensland Fertility Group. Now, what is quite amazing is that for another three years after that fact, Queensland Fertility Group did nothing to minimise the risks for its patients and it only started checking its sperm samples in 2023. It did an audit to look at what the risks were for mislabelling of those sperm donations and the results were shocking. 99% of local sperm frozen before 2020 was deemed high risk of not being the person on the label. So I spoke with an IVF researcher, Karin Hammarberg, and she talks about being deeply worried about the risk that this could have posed to thousands of IVF parents. She said that mistakes happen and we know that, but once a mistake has happened, the best thing you can do is put processes in place to ensure that the mistake is not repeated.

Karin Hammarberg, IVF researcher: It also makes you really concerned about the number of people who might have potentially then had the wrong sperm used in their procedures.

Sam Hawley: Because we've seen other cases of this, right? Monash IVF Clinic, that's been in the news a lot lately, hasn't it?

Grace Tobin: Well, that's right, Sam. This year alone, Monash IVF, which is another major fertility provider, it's had two cases exposed. So we heard about a 2023 case where Monash IVF was forced to apologise after a Brisbane patient had been mistakenly implanted with another woman's embryo and gave birth to a baby who had no genetic links to her later that year. It also then emerged that a woman in a same-sex relationship who wanted to carry her partner's baby was given her own biological embryo in a second mix-up by Monash. I have also spoken with other patients of Queensland Fertility Group, for that matter. Anastasia Gunn is one of those parents who is suing Queensland Fertility Group for mixing up two of its own sperm donors here in Australia.

Anastasia Gunn, IVF mother: We were completely shocked that Queensland Fertility Group had used the wrong sperm to make two of our children.

Grace Tobin: So she has three sons born from IVF and they were all meant to have the same biological father, but two of them don't. And it's been a really horrific experience for her.

Anastasia Gunn, IVF mother: What it potentially means is that you don't know the true biological heritage of your children. That is completely unacceptable on every level.

Sam Hawley: All right, well, Grace, thousands upon thousands of Australians use IVF and this would be such a huge concern for them. There are calls, of course, for the regulator to now be overhauled.

Grace Tobin: Yes, well, there is just so much scrutiny and so much scrutiny around the regulator RTAC at the moment for its effectiveness. And many experts say that the issue essentially is that it's funded and run by the IVF industry itself. And, you know, experts like Karin Hammenberg says it needs to be fully independent. But another big issue is that there are currently eight different systems of regulation around the country and all the different states and territory. So there's strong calls for a uniform national fertility law. At the moment, we've got this rapid review into the industry underway and the Health Minister, Mark Butler, says he's open to establishing a national body to regulate the industry.

Mark Butler, Health minister: I'm very keen to look at proposals to take over regulation from the industry itself. I think self-regulation isn't working and I don't think it's inspiring the confidence that parents need.

Grace Tobin: He also says that he's meeting with state and territory counterparts next week to discuss regulation because for too long, the industry has been self-regulated.

Sam Hawley: Yeah, and if it isn't regulated properly, Grace, this could have really far-reaching consequences, couldn't it? Because these are the cases we know about. I gather the theory is there's a lot of cases that we don't.

Grace Tobin: That's right. Unfortunately, because of the little transparency and accountability going on within this industry, we are not hearing about the mistakes and therefore the clinics aren't learning lessons from each other as well. But we're talking about people's lives here and very real consequences. And as the Brisbane couple's friend, Jo, told me, it's not that these kids aren't loved, they are, but these couples shouldn't be put in this situation in the first place.

Sam Hawley: Grace Tobin is an investigative journalist with the ABC. She reported the story of the latest IVF mix-up for 7.30 on ABC.TV. You can find that on iView. This episode was produced by Sydney Pead. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. Thanks for listening.