Ottawa doctor accused of switching donor sperm for his own.
She always wondered about the fact that she didn’t resemble her parents. Now an Ottawa woman has a good idea of why.
Rebecca Dixon has olive-coloured skin and brown eyes, while her parents are fair-skinned with blue eyes.
A recent DNA test confirmed that the man who raised her is not her biological father, and seems to point to the fertility doctor her parents consulted over two decades ago.
After years of trying to conceive, her parents Daniel and Davina went to a clinic in Ottawa operated by Dr Norman Barwin to have Davina’s eggs implanted with Daniel’s sperm. Rebecca was born a year later in 1990.
Complete shock
Now 26, Rebecca saw an online story earlier this year saying it was unusual for two blue-eyed parents to have a brown-eyed child. Rebecca was then diagnosed with celiac disease, usually hereditary, but not in the Dixon family. A subsequent blood test showed she had type 0+ blood, and Daniel had AB. Someone with AB cannot conceive a child with type 0 blood.
Then Rebecca had a DNA test which confirmed Daniel was not her biological father and that her blood line was 60 percent Ashkenazi Jewish. Dr Barwin is a well-known member of the Jewish community.
Quoted in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper she said, “It was a complete shock. There’s a sense of injustice, there’s a sense of anger on behalf of my parents who do feel violated and betrayed”.
Class action
Lawyers have now filed a request for a class-action lawsuit against Dr Barwin. According to the statement of claim, Dixon’s DNA was compared with another young woman, 25 year-old Kat Palmer, who had also been conceived at Barwin’s clinic. That test confirmed the two had the same biological father. Barwin confirmed in a 2015 email to Palmer that he was her biological father.
In 2013 Barwin was suspended for two months by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario in a case of professional misconduct after he admitted having inseminated four women with the wrong sperm over a 21-year period. That resulted in two, one million dollar lawsuits, which were later settled out of court. In 2014, Barwin resigned from the Order of Canada.
Lawyers filing the statement of claim against Dr Barwin have asked for a voluntary sample of his DNA.
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