Bad Doctor Week: Cecil Jacobson
Yesterday’s post dealt with a fictional unscrupulous obstetrician; today’s will focus on a real world case.
Dr. Cecil Jacobson ran an infertility clinic in an upper-class area of northern Virginia. He deserves to be on my Bad Doctor list for two reasons:
In the mid-1960s, Jacobson was a researcher at George Washington University Medical School when he claimed to have successfully impregnated a male baboon by transplanting a fertilized egg from a female baboon into the male’s abdominal cavity. Allegedly, the male baboon remained “in the family way” for four months until Dr. Jacobson terminated the pregnancy. Jacobson never published any data, research, or other information on this experiment, so his results are best viewed with heavy skepticism.
Jacobson’s real claim to infamy came in the 1991. At this time, Jacobson ran the Reproductive Genetics Center (an infertility clinic) that specialized in infertility counseling, in-vitro fertilization, and semen for artificial insemination. Jacobson claimed to use a specialized screening program to identify sperm donors who were the most similar to his patients’ husbands, but in reality he used his own sperm. His scheme came to light when one of his former patients noted that her child bore an uncanny resemblance to the doctor. It is believed that 75 of his patients received IVF using Jacobson’s “personal samples.” Only seven submitted to genetics testing, and all seven were indeed fathered by Jacobson. He was charged with 53 counts of fraud and served five years in prison.
- The Wikipedia article on Dr. Cecil Jacobson
- Script of the hilarious Saturday Night Live skit “My 75 Kids” starring John Goodman as Dr. Jacobson.
- Dr. Jacobson earns two coveted spots on the Museum of Hoxes page on “Birth Hoaxes.”
- The case appears in an article concerning “Natural Selection in Family Law: Legal Cases and Materials” (third paragraph down).
- A press release on the 1992 IgNobel Prize Ceremony, which included a prize won by Dr. Jacobson for “devising a simple, single-handed method of quality control.”
- IMDB entry on The Babymaker: The Dr. Cecil Jacobson Story, starring Melissa Gilbert, Shanna Reed, and George Dzundza as Dr. Jacobson.
July 20th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
There was also a Law & Order episode (don’t remember which particular series) that dealt with pretty much a fictionalized version of Dr. Jacobson.
July 20th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
Only five years? That’s disgusting.
July 20th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
That is so heinous! I think he looks like the baboon he claims to have impregnanted. Shudder!
July 20th, 2006 at 10:28 pm
Re Post #1:
It was plain old Law & Order (AKA: The Mothership). In that epsiode, the case never went to trial, because McCoy couldn’t find anyone willing to testify against the Jacobson stand-in. (The one couple he knew of for sure refused out of shame, because they’d conceived that IVF child as a bone marrow donor for their older daughter, who ended up dying.)
July 20th, 2006 at 10:58 pm
BitterCupoJoe, I was just about to type that! It was “Seed” from original *Law and Order*, Season 5 (not that I knew this by heart – just remembered that it had Detectives Briscoe and Logan and looked it up on that).
October 19th, 2006 at 12:50 am
Wow. dude got 75 women preggers with his own sperm w/o telling them? Ouch. Scary thing is now, his genetic seed has spreaaaaad ouuuuut now… they should have sued him for rape.
April 30th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
This whole thing took place at the height of the AIDS crisis; all anybody knew about AIDS at the time was that it was sexually transmitted and that it was 100% fatal. Not a terribly neat or cool thing to have happening to some poor woman just trying to get pregnant and going on using anonymous donors at the time would have involved an unacceptable risk of that. Jacobson had one way and one way only of guaranteeing that none of his patients died of AIDS and with something like a 180 IQ, it’s not like it was bad genetics. Try thinking once in a while.
May 1st, 2007 at 9:05 am
Official Comment
AIDS and IQ have little to do with it. It comes down to ethics and morals, particularly for a physician in this particular field, and Jacobson lacked both. He falsified research and deliberately lied to patients. That’s a bad doctor in any light.
May 1st, 2007 at 9:04 pm
I suppose naziism didn’t have anything to do with WW-II either…..
Jacobson simply did not have any OTHER motive.
May 1st, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Official Comment
That argument make no sense, except to prove Godwin’s Law.
You can throw out all the straw men, non-sequiturs, and poor analogies you like, but it doesn’t change the fact that Jacobson lied to his patients and misled them about the nature of the sperm donations. Trying to rewrite history after the fact still can’t explain his deceitful behavior. If he had nothing but altruistic intentions, why hide them behind lies?
October 29th, 2007 at 10:44 am
75 kids from 75 different women? That’s AWESOME! He is Da MAN! A rabbit couldn’t reproduce the way he did. Five years is a small price for infamy.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Why wasn’t he prosecuted for child support?? He also should have been charged with rape. That’s what it was. What an awful thing to do to couples who just wanted to have a child. I do think that he should have served a lot longer than 5 years!
July 6th, 2008 at 8:54 am
This man repeatedly made women believe they were pregnant by using hormone injections to mimic the symptoms of pregnancy, then he told them they had miscarriages. The women weren’t ever pregnant and he got money for nothing. The women grieved for babies that were never there. Then he impregnated others with his own sperm after charging them money for HIM finding donors. He was a scam artist and deliberately broke the hearts of women who thought they had miscarried when they weren’t even pregnant. He was a SCUM BAG narcissicist who thought he was gods gift to the world. Donors were being tested for AIDS at that stage, so that is not a viable excuse.
August 28th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Just found this website. I was one of his patients. Supposedly miscarried four times. Grieved four times.
I’m 60 yrs old now and still can’t forget how heart breaking this was to my husband and myself. Luckily we’re still together but never had children. This man is a monster !
October 31st, 2008 at 3:48 am
Man that dude needs to be shotttt!
He’s wack in da head bruddahh.. If i was one of the women with his sperm i’d be depressed fo’ life.
September 20th, 2009 at 6:47 am
The reason the sentence was so light is because US law simply did not cover issues like this. That is becoming an increasing problem these days.
December 27th, 2009 at 4:40 am
I wonder if all of his children will ever meet and if they do, will it be accidental. How horrible to think you’ve fallen in love with and are intending to marry your sibling.Most of the children were born in the N. Va. area. They could’ve gone to school together too, and not known they were brothers and sisters.
Infertile couples have so much heartache, and now it seems that the children may have the same.
Very sad.
May 6th, 2011 at 11:46 pm
I think this guy, more than anything, used his own sperm so he could ensure that his seeds were well-sowed. It makes him feel good to know that his legacy is carried on by so many children… He even had 7 children at home, he wanted more but his wife did not. He apparently just loved creating babies… and jerking off. I definitely agree with the majority here – he is a sick and twisted individual who deserved a harsher sentence than what he received!
March 18th, 2015 at 11:04 pm
I just watched the telemovie”seeds of deception”.I don’t understand why he did what he did.Did he make money from this,or was there another motive. Were his motives ever established??
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