Fertility clinic swap creates identity crisis

The University of Utah finds itself in a bit of a quandary in the wake of a scandal involving a defunct fertility clinic that left behind no records and a dead suspect who once worked there and reportedly replaced a customer's sperm with his own.

A university hotline has fielded 17 calls in recent days about possible tampering of semen samples at the fertility clinic once operated by faculty members.

Yet officials say they may never get to the bottom of a complaint that a convicted felon working as a technologist at the clinic two decades ago switched his sperm, leaving a woman who is now 21 asking, “Who am I?”

University officials say they're stumped because the mix-up happened in 1991, the clinic closed in the 1990s and the suspect died in 1999. “Unfortunately, the reality of this very disturbing situation is that there is very little information with which to make any definitive conclusions,” Kathy Wilets, a spokeswoman for the university's health sciences division, told the Associated Press.

State and federal prosecutors said they were unaware of the allegation and weren't certain it warranted an investigation.

Pamela Branum said a genetic mismatch was discovered in her daughter, now 21, and they were able to trace her lineage with help from relatives of the now-deceased clinic worker, Thomas Ray Lippert.

The university is offering free paternity testing to anyone who used the clinic. They say it appears Lippert worked there from 1988 until the mid- or late-1990s.

“It was hard at first, to think, 'Who am I?' ” the family's daughter told CBS affiliate KUTV. “I thought I was this person (of) my mom and my dad. Now, my dad is not my biological father.”

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