Patients are calling for action from Duke Health officials after recently discovering a fertility doctor was the father of more than a dozen children outside of his immediate family.
Laurie Kruppa had three children through artificial insemination at Duke Hospital. Thirty-five years later, she found out that the sperm donor was actually her doctor, Charles Peete.
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“We trusted him,” Kruppa said.
Kruppa told her children how they were conceived in 2018. After doing their own digging through genetic testing company 23 and Me, they discovered the fertility doctor was his biological father.
Several months later, she took the discovery to Duke.
“They had no clue, nothing,” Kruppa said.
Instead of suing, Kruppa called for a required training. That was five years ago. Now, she wants Duke to do more: notify all of Peete’s patients and help pay for the resulting children’s genetic testing.
“Either [Peete] didn’t care or he figured it didn’t matter,” Kruppa told WRAL. “The fact that he was older than my dad, that’s what really bugs me.”
She said one of her children struggled with a disease and knowing Peete’s genetic background could have helped doctors.
In a statement, Duke Health said: “We have been made aware of unacceptable actions by an individual that occurred in our program in the early days of fertility care, at least 40 years ago. The unacceptable actions could not happen today at Duke Health and should never have happened.
For several years, Duke Health has been in communication with those individual patients and family members who have come forward and who have desired to share information with us. We continue these individual conversations, and we welcome the opportunity to communicate with other patients and family members who choose to come forward.”
Duke Health now uses radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to track patients’ eggs, sperm and embryos.
Peete died in 2013.
According to Duke Archives, he was doctor there for nearly four decades there. He is believed to have fathered more than a dozen children outside of his immediate family.
Legislative efforts
This situation isn’t unique to Kruppa, Duke or Dr. Peete.
Eve Wiley was also conceived through a fertility doctor’s deception in another state.
“My mother's fertility doctor is actually my biological father and not the sperm donor my parents selected,” she said.
Eve Wiley helped pass legislation to hold doctors like Peete and her biological father accountable. Fourteen states have enacted some type of fertility fraud laws so far. She is also working on a federal bill.
“We want to make sure that we’re not just, if there’s someone else that’s doing something nefarious, we want to make sure that we’re wanting to capture that criminal side of it as well,” Wiley said.
However, North Carolina has not taken that step. Peete died in 2013, but Kruppa said if Duke Health sent a letter, it may help them find more of his potential children.
“I think we need the genetics; we might be able to find more [victims],” Kruppa said. “Who knows how many.”
WRAL News spoke to Summer McKesson, who learned from a DNA test that Peete was her biological father. She is pushing North Carolina legislators to take action, to hold doctors like her biological father accountable and protect kids like her.