Science and Technology Committee - Donor dads and anonymity

Donor dads and anonymity

H is 18 and the product of IVF involving sperm donation. The donor is a married man with three children. He donated the sperm as his brother had fertility problems and he wanted to help those in the similar position. He had no wish to have any relationship with any resulting children and indeed did not tell his wife that he had donated sperm. H enjoyed a close relationship with his parents but they died when he was younger. He now wishes to meet his genetic father. At present all he had been told is basic information about the man’s background. Should the offspring resulting from donated sperm have the right to know their genetic father? What about future donations where the donor knows that he may be contacted in the future by any offspring resulting from the use of his sperm?

Legal status: Anonymity is at present provided for under the HFE Act. The Department of Health has announced that it will ask Parliament to change in the law. It is intended that the change in the law will not be made retrospective.

Scientific status: Technology currently available

Whilst I can see no logical d

posted 27/01/2004 - 20:58 by Sleepy

Whilst I can see no logical difference between the wish of an adopted child to know the identity of its genetic parents and the wish of the child of IVF to know the identity of the donor, I imagine that changing the anonymity rules would greatly reduce the number of people prepared to donate sperm.

One donor could potentially father many children and I imagine that the idea of one or more of these getting in touch many years down the line would be quite terrifying! Particularly as the personal circumstances of the donor might have altered hugely.

Certainly any changes should not be made retroactively, as this would be grossly unfair on donors who signed up under the original terms.

Unfair on donors?

posted 13/02/2004 - 16:27 by Christine

Would the retroactive removal of donor anonymity be unfair on donors? It certainly seems unfair to expect donor conceived people like myself to accept that they are the only group of people who must remain deliberately deprived of their full identity, ethnicity, medical history and kinship networks.

If the general public understood a little more about the secret history of donor insemination they would know that there were no legally binding sperm donor contracts when the procedure was first privately available 60 years ago. Donors were acting under a "Gentleman's agreement" of anonymity at a time when DI was not recognised in law. As recently as the late 1960s and early 1970s private clinics recruited donors without any paperwork being signed. Very few clinics kept accurate records relating to sperm donors or the number of babies attributed to them and most pre-1991 records are thought to have been destroyed.

Now that society is moving to a point where it is accepted that the withholding of full identity information from donor conceived people is a violation of Human Rights, there is an implication that former donors would be failing in their duty as citizens to continue to withhold information about themselves from the people they deliberately helped to create.

Donor Information

posted 28/01/2004 - 11:04 by Richard Fleming

There is negligible similarity with adoption. The child has never been rejected by its parents. There is no acceptable reason for the government to hold information regarding the identity of parents on only one group in society (donor children). If the anxiety is based on acknowledgement that the government should not withold information from individuals, then the government or its agents should not store that information.
The result of the recent decision will follow that of other places, whereby couples seeking this form of treatment go to places where anonymity is the rule (those who can afford it). Thus the children will not even know whether they are products of this treatment or not.
The law should have been changed so that non-anymous donations are encouraged - but not prohibiting the current practice altogether.
This is bad la

Freedom of Information

posted 18/02/2004 - 16:00 by Dr Neville Cobbe

Sorry Richard, pointing out a single potential difference does not qualify as "negligible similarity". In cases of adoption and gamete donation alike, the genetic parent is not involved in bringing up the child. Adoption does not necessarily result from rejection of a child by their parents- the parents may simply have died. In fact, to say that "the child has never been rejected by its parents" in all cases of sperm donation would suggest that the true genetic father would have no problem in disclosing his identity. If sperm donors have not rejected their children, would they not be delighted if their offspring made contact with them?

I agree wholeheartedly with the comments by Christine Whipp and Martin Foley. I believe all children deserve to be able to discover their genetic origins, for both their physical health and mental wellbeing, regardless of how they were conceived. If, as Richard Fleming seem to propose, the state should just destroy or never record information about sperm donors, then this is like losing part of one’s medical record. To state the obvious, no child chooses how they are brought into this world but sperm donors choose to donate, and it is inevitable that one’s choices will have consequences. To withhold information from donor conceived people simply out of fear that the number of gamete donors may fall is little more than letting one’s ethics be dictated by market forces.

Message from the committee secretariat

posted 09/02/2004 - 11:53 by robertsa

If this is an issue of the state withholding information that it holds, are there acceptable and practical ways of anonymising data or even pooling donations?

Some surveys have indicated that there are a surprisingly high number of people do not know who their genetic father is. If people have a right to know their genetic origins, should they be able to demand that paternity tests are taken by certain individuals?

Re: Message from the committee secretariat

posted 19/02/2004 - 17:22 by Christine

I have never seen any of the often quoted "surveys" which have indicated that a surprisingly high number of people do not know who their genetic father is, but the pro-donor gamete lobby certainly delight in mentioning them as justification for the continued use of anonymous sperm, eggs and embryos. There have been suggestions that 1 in 10 people may not be who they think they are and I have even seen the absurd figure of 1 in 4 mentioned.

The fact that a minority of people are conceived through natural lust outside of a legal relationship and are duped about their true full identity, does not excuse the deliberate creation of donor offspring.

Wrongfully attributed paternity is no comparison to a situation whereby the medical profession, the donor, the state, the biological parent and the social parent all conspire to deliberately create and deceive the artificially conceived person (along with other members of it's family and the rest of society) about the true nature of it's origins.

As for the real number of wrongly attributed paternities from natural births, there is some genuine scientific research which suggests that the number of such births has been greatly exaggerated. Genetic scientist Professor Brian Sykes of Oxford University has studied the Y-chromosome and discovered through multiple testing of men with the surname of Sykes and Pomeroy, that (almost) all share a common genetic bond. He hopes eventually to build a database of Surnames from Y-chromosome types. His analysis suggests that (quoting from the Saturday Mail magazine article on genealogy):

" .... through all the cycles of generations, there are about 1.3% of births where the official father is not the actual father."

Compare that with the high and growing number (sadly the exact number is not even known) of donor conceived children in the UK, where probably only 5% of them will ever be told that they while they are the person named on their birth certificate, they are not the person who is described on it.

Donor dads and anonymity

posted 18/02/2004 - 11:33 by Ian Elliott Benson

My own opinion is that sperm donation is wrong in itself.

Donor dads and anonymity

posted 18/02/2004 - 14:40 by Martin Foley

The primary object of our concern should be the child, in this scenario H. H should be entitled to know who his genetic father is.

Potential sperm and egg donors must appreciate that they are getting involved in something momentous, the creation of human life. The decision to donate must be approached with seriousness and with full knowledge of the implications - that you may be the genetic father/mother of a child.

If the decision to remove donor anonymity results in a fall in sperm and egg donation this is a small price to pay for allowing children to know who their parents are.

Damage caused by DI to the medical profession

posted 04/03/2004 - 17:45 by Rupert Rushbrooke

Fertility doctors publicly disparage the idea that DI-adults need their blood identities and blood relationships, but what do these doctors actually know about identity issues? Few, if any, have any relevant training, qualifications, background or experience. A lot of what these doctors say is really nonsense, but the press lazily accepts their statements as having professional authority.

The fact is that DI-adults need their blood relationships because they are human beings. People need to be protected from damage to their identities in the same way that they need to be protected from any other sort of physical or psychological assault.

As attitudes change and DI is gradually made more open it will become easier and easier to do research on DI-adults. This means that the damage done to them will become increasingly obvious.

I think it’s just a matter of time before DI starts to be discredited, and with it the fertility industry generally. I think there will also be a lot of damage to the public's faith in the medical profession that has allowed all this to happen.

Rupert Rushbrooke

Director of Bloodlines
www.bloodlines.org.uk

Donor Dads and anonymity

posted 05/03/2004 - 14:50 by Philippa Taylor

H has the right to know fundamental information about his existence and that knowledge of his genetic heritage (which most of us take for granted) should not be deliberately denied him. This right should outweigh the donor’s wish for anonymity, particularly as H is the one party who has had no choice in the matter. In such cases, the welfare of the child should be the priority, so children must not be denied the right to be able to trace their genetic parent should they - not their donor - so desire. It always seems that too much weight is given to the rights and desires of donors at the expense of the rights and welfare of the children born.

It must be obvious that deliberately denying children fundamental knowledge of themselves can, potentially, adversely affect the child’s development of a secure identity (and thus welfare), with consequences throughout their adult lives. This has been acknowledged in the case of adopted children who can now know their genetic and biological heritage. Yet the same right is denied for the children of donor gametes.

Whatever, it is going to become harder for authorities to maintain a position of secrecy and genetic anonymity when anyone can now find out his/her basic genetic make-up through an examination of his/her DNA. Also, children and parents will increasingly request (and need) information on their genetic heritage in order take appropriate precautions for their future health (e.g. regular eye check-ups and/or dietary or lifestyle changes). At the moment children born of donor insemination cannot even contribute properly to family history questionnaires. What if donor conceived children develop a major health problem - should they continue to be deliberately denied information that could help them in their understanding of their health? Making this law retrospective would clearly give rise to major concerns for past donors, yet we cannot ignore the needs and rights of DI children themselves. Whose 'rights' and needs are of most importance here?