What you need to do is convert each single apostraphe into a pair of apostraphes. I did this using the replace function in VBScript. It looked something like this:
name = name.Replace ("'","''")
SQL Server will interpret a pair of apostraphes as a single apostraphe in the database. The replace statement works just fine even if there are no apostraphes in the string. This should work equally well for Visual Basic or any other development tool.
The SQL syntax to insert a string like this looks something like:
INSERT Table1 (columnName)
VALUES ('Merlin D''Souza')
This will insert a single quote or apostrophe into the field between the "D" and the "S".