Hawaiian fertility doctor accused of fathering children of his patients

A Hawaiian fertility doctor is being accused of secretly fathering the children of multiple patients.

Key Takeaways:

• Victoria Snyder was a patient of gynecologist William McKenzie in the 1990s, and requested to use an anonymous Filipino sperm donor. She gave birth to twin boys in 1994.

• At 23, her sons underwent genetic testing, and learned McKenzie was their biological father.

• Snyder filed a lawsuit in 2019, and it was settled in 2020; however, the suit resurfaced on social media and went viral, with some commenters identifying themselves as McKenzie's children.

• Two other families told the Honolulu Civil Beat that they also were victims of fertility fraud.

The Details:

The Honolulu Civil Beat reported that Snyder became McKenzie's patient in 1993. She requested to be inseminated with sperm from an anonymous Filipino donor, and gave birth to twin boys in 1994. When they were 23, her sons underwent genetic testing, and realized they had been fathered by McKenzie.

Snyder filed a civil lawsuit in 2019, and McKenzie denied using his own sperm without her consent. Still, the lawsuit was settled in 2020, and that was the end of it for six years. Yet according to the Civil Beat, the fertility fraud claims resurfaced when an Instagram user posted a video about them. The user claimed to be a former patient of McKenzie's, and accused him of “artificially inseminating dozens of women with his semen."

Hundreds of people commented, including some who said they were McKenzie's biological children.

This appears to be the video being referenced:

The Civil Beat was able to corroborate the woman's claims, writing:

But Snyder was not the only former patient with children fathered by McKenzie, according to members of two families who spoke to Civil Beat on the condition of anonymity, fearing public attention could harm their families. That means the twins have multiple half-siblings.

McKenzie retired in 2021, though he still holds an active medical license.

The Big Picture:

With the rise of online genetic testing, there have been numerous cases of fertility doctors found to have secretly impregnated their patients. Known as fertility fraud, it is disturbingly common, especially among patients who sought help conceiving in the 1970s and 1980s.

These are just a handful of known fertility fraud cases; there are many more:

• A Detroit doctor fathered hundreds of children.

• A pair of doctors has fathered 75 children between them.

• An Idaho woman sued after a DNA test revealed that her daughter is her doctor's biological child.

• Jos Beek, a Dutch doctor, fathered at least 21 children.

• A woman who took an at-home DNA test learned that her biological father was her parents’ fertility doctor.

• A federal court jury in Vermont awarded a woman damages after her fertility doctor impregnated her.

As Live Action News previously reported, the very act of artificial insemination was born out of fertility fraud:

The earliest recorded insemination procedure at a medical facility was carried out in 1884 by Dr. William Pancoast at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia.

After finding that a woman's husband had a low sperm count, Pancoast chloroformed the woman and injected her with semen from a medical student without the woman's knowledge. When she became pregnant, she believed the child to be her husband's.

Pancoast ultimately told the husband, who agreed to keep it quiet, but in 1909, the medical student, Dr. Addison Davis Hard, told the now-grown child the truth and then published a letter in the journal Medical World, unleashing all of the details.

It is unknown if the child's mother ever learned the truth.

Yet the fertility industry remains largely unregulated, and the majority of states do not have any specific laws addressing fertility fraud.

The Bottom Line:

OB/GYNs are treating women at their most vulnerable, with these would-be parents trusting their doctors with the conception of their children. Fertility fraud violates that trust, and robs children of their inherent right to know who their parents are and where they come from.