Cecil Jacobson
Cecil Byran Jacobson (born October 2, 1936 in Salt Lake City, Utah) was an American fertility doctor who used his own sperm to impregnate his patients.
In the 1960s, Jacobson, who was a researcher and Chief of the Reproductive Genetics Unit at George Washington University Medical School, claimed that he had impregnated a male baboon; he had supposedly planted a fertilized egg from a female baboon into the male's abdominal cavity. He claimed that he had terminated the pregnancy after four months. He never published his results in scientific publications; rather, he just talked about them [citation needed].
In the 1980s, Jacobson operated reproductive genetics center in Tysons Corner, Virginia. He told the prospective mothers that he ran a donor program that screened the men carefully to obtain the best possible material. Instead, all the sperm came from him. The women would be impregnated via in-vitro fertilization. He also led other women to believe they were pregnant but later claimed they had miscarried.
Jacobson fathered at least seven of his patients' children; the remainder of his 75 patients did not want to submit to the paternity test. Jacobson's sentence in 1991 was based on 53 counts of mail fraud, wire fraud and perjury. He was sentenced for five years in jail and had his medical license revoked. He was released, and he now lives in Provo, Utah.
He was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for Biology in 1992. His nicknames are "The Sperminator" and "The Babymaker".
Book about Jacobson case
- Babymaker: Fertility, Fraud and the Fall of Doctor Cecil Jacobson (1993) ISBN 0-553-56162-6