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Could problems related to the practice of an Ottawa fertility doctor accused of inseminating couples with his own sperm stretch back four decades?

That’s the prospect lawyers in a pending class action lawsuit are raising as they appeal to anyone who saw Dr. Norman Barwin for fertility help to contact them.

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Barwin was hired in 1973 at what was then the Ottawa General Hospital as director of its high-risk pregnancy unit and co-director of its fertility clinic.

He also established a sperm bank at the clinic.

Barwin worked at the facility, now known as The Ottawa Hospital’s General campus, until 1984, when he set up a private practice, the Broadview Fertility Clinic.

Errors made at that clinic have spawned at least four lawsuits against Barwin, including the class action filed last year, and professional sanctions from the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons.

In 2013, Barwin told a disciplinary hearing that he had “no idea” how three clients at his Broadview clinic were inseminated with the wrong sperm. As part of a plea bargain in that case, he was banned from practising medicine for two months and agreed to permanently end his fertility practice.