Sperm donors need limits, says a European fertility group

Ties van der Meer doesn’t know how many siblings he has. The 47-year-old was conceived at a private fertility clinic in the Netherlands using sperm provided by an anonymous donor. After the Netherlands banned anonymous donation in 2004, the doctor who ran the clinic destroyed records that might have identified those donors, he says. He describes the situation as “problematic.” Children have a right to know their biological parents, he says. While he did ultimately track down one sibling, who helped him identify his father along with other genetic relatives, he may have others he’ll never find. Other donor-conceived people who have been able to track down siblings have found they have tens or even hundreds of them. One donor-conceived woman who found 25 half-siblings over the course of seven years told the Guardian , “It does make you feel a bit mass-produced.” We need international limits on the number of children a single donor can contribute to, a European fertility organization argued yesterday. At a conference in London, members laid out plans to start with a Europe-wide limit. Today many countries, including the UK, have banned anonymous egg and sperm donation. But anonymity can’t be guaranteed even in places where it is technically allowed. Genetic tests offered by companies like Ancestry and 23andMe, along with genetic registries, have made it much easier for donor-conceived people to find parents and siblings who share their genes. And because sperm can be frozen and stored for years before it is eventually used, the current set-up can result in situations where donor-conceived people discover the identity of a genetic parent only after the person’s death. They might also find that they have siblings of very different ages, all around the world. Some people are finding hundreds of siblings. Sperm from Jonathan Meijer, a Dutch man who began donating in 2007, was used to conceive between 550 and 600 children . ( Stichting Donorkind , a foundation and advocacy