Children born thanks to IVF pioneer find biological father is scientist at his lab

Questions have been raised about one of the UK's most wellknown fertility doctors after two people whose parents attended his clinic reportedly made the shock discovery that their biological father is a lab scientist who worked in the same hospital as the physician.

- ELLIE NG

Patrick Steptoe, who died in 1988, was an obstetrician and gynaecologist who helped develop in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and ran a fertility clinic in Oldham Hospital, Greater Manchester. The parents of Roz Snyder, 52, and David Gertler, 51, attended the clinic around the 1970s after struggling to conceive children.

Ms Snyder and Mr Gertler were shocked after DNA tests revealed they are half-siblings, the Telegraph reported. The pair were recently alerted by the genealogy website Ancestry that their late fathers are not their biological ones, but that they shared a biological father in Roy Hollihead, who ran a pathology laboratory one floor above Dr Steptoe’s clinic.