INFERTILITY PATIENTS MISLED, DOCTOR SAYS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 19, 1992                   TAG: 9202190339
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ALEXANDRIA                                LENGTH: Short
INFERTILITY PATIENTS MISLED, DOCTOR SAYS
An infertility doctor being tried on fraud charges misled a "staggering" number of patients through false pregnancies and miscarriages, a doctor who examined his records testified Tuesday.
Dr. Cecil Jacobson "knew exactly what he was doing," said Dr. Mary Damewood, an infertility specialist at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Jacobson faces 52 counts of fraud and perjury. He is accused of using hormone injections to trick some patients into believing they were pregnant when they were not and of fathering up to 75 children by using his own sperm in artificial insemination while lying about the source.
Another witness, Launi Jean Robertson, who worked as a receptionist for Jacobson from 1982 to 1985, said she became convinced that Jacobson was using his own semen and that sometimes one sample would be distributed among more than one patient.
"There was only a certain amount [of sperm] there and a number of patients coming in," she said.
Damewood said she examined records of about 1,000 of Jacobson's patients and found that hundreds of them had been led through a series of supposed pregnancies and miscarriages.
"The number of patients that have failed pregnancies and these basically unheard of reabsorptions was just staggering," she said.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB