One Sperm Donor, 150 Offspring

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*Cynthia Daily and her partner used a sperm donor to conceive a baby seven years ago, and they hoped that one day their son would get to know some of his half siblings — an extended family of sorts for modern times.

So Ms. Daily searched a Web-based registry for other children fathered by the same donor and helped to create an online group to track them. Over the years, she watched the number of children in her son’s group grow. And grow. Today there are 150 children, all conceived with sperm from one donor, in this group of half siblings, and more are on the way. “It’s wild when we see them all together — they all look alike,” said Ms. Daily, 48, a social worker in the Washington area who sometimes vacations with other families in her son’s group. *

nytimes.com/2011/09/06/health/06donor.html?_r=2&hp
We live in a very sick world.
 
irishpatrick said:
*Cynthia Daily and her partner used a sperm donor to conceive a baby seven years ago, and they hoped that one day their son would get to know some of his half siblings — an extended family of sorts for modern times.

So Ms. Daily searched a Web-based registry for other children fathered by the same donor and helped to create an online group to track them. Over the years, she watched the number of children in her son’s group grow. And grow. Today there are 150 children, all conceived with sperm from one donor, in this group of half siblings, and more are on the way. “It’s wild when we see them all together — they all look alike,” said Ms. Daily, 48, a social worker in the Washington area who sometimes vacations with other families in her son’s group. *

nytimes.com/2011/09/06/health/06donor.html?_r=2&hp
We live in a very sick world.
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“My daughter knows her donor’s number for this very reason,” said the mother of a teenager conceived via sperm donation in California who asked that her name be withheld to protect her daughter’s privacy. “She’s been in school with numerous kids who were born through donors. She’s had crushes on boys who are donor children. It’s become part of sex education” for her.

Yes indeed we do.
 
anp1215 said:
“My daughter knows her donor’s number for this very reason,” said the mother of a teenager conceived via sperm donation in California who asked that her name be withheld to protect her daughter’s privacy. “She’s been in school with numerous kids who were born through donors. She’s had crushes on boys who are donor children. It’s become part of sex education” for her.

Yes indeed we do.
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I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?

Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for. *

Sometimes it is difficult to recall that there is still a lot left to struggle for. At times it feels hopeless, but with Christ, nothing is impossible.
 
irishpatrick said:
I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?

Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for. *

Sometimes it is difficult to recall that there is still a lot left to struggle for. At times it feels hopeless, but with Christ, nothing is impossible.
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Very true.
 
I wonder if those sperm donors ever wonder if the info will leak out and 150 paternity suits will show up at the door… :eek:
 
anp1215 said:
“My daughter knows her donor’s number for this very reason,” said the mother of a teenager conceived via sperm donation in California who asked that her name be withheld to protect her daughter’s privacy. “She’s been in school with numerous kids who were born through donors. She’s had crushes on boys who are donor children. It’s become part of sex education” for her.

Yes indeed we do.
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:sad_yes:
 
Think there’s a problem with adoptee’s from the closed adoption era knowing their information, this will be the next big problem. And boy, plenty of those kids will be ticked, why, because they won’t know, and they will feel that they were denied being conceived in the right context. This is a disaster and until we give these individuals who are alive because of IVF a loud voice and look at them as the experts, this twisted and immoral practice will continue to be used and promoted as normal and moral.
 
Good post gmarie. These problems exist largely because we’ve evolved to be a society that focuses on the parent in parenthood. Parenthood is supposed to be about focusing away from yourself and onto the child, not the other way around.
 
What’s new? As I recall, Gheghis Khan was a - ahem - sperm donor to hundreds of women who delivered thousands of children so long ago. 😃
 
freespermdonorregistry.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=37:donor-conception-and-childrens-rights-qfirst-do-no-harmq&catid=12:in-the-news&Itemid=87
Here’s Tom Ellis’s response to being challenged, by an advocate of donor conception, to prove that donor conception causes any harm: “The very demand that we should produce ‘scientific’ evidence of the harm done to us is one of the many reasons that the voices of donor-conceived people are so rarely heard. The fact that I have been intentionally separated from my father is the single most important facet of my identity, and the pain this has caused is with me every day of my life. Having my personal experience dismissed as an ‘anecdote’ is more than I can bear. Who wants to be required to produce a scientific paper to justify their right to feel the way they feel?”
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The debate about whether donor-conception is ethical or not should be conducted on the basis of rational argument, of which the scientific method is one part. However, science is not the whole story, people’s emotions are not electrons and science has limited application in this field. The single most important way to understand donor-conception is by listening to the stories of donor-conceived people and understanding why they feel the way they do about their deliberate separation from their biological parents.
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gmarie21 said:
This is a disaster and until we give these individuals who are alive because of IVF a loud voice and look at them as the experts, this twisted and immoral practice will continue to be used and promoted as normal and moral.
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I think you are confusing IVF and artificial insemination.
 
This whole issue has caused me to ponder 2 lines of distinct questions:
  1. Who is this donor and what is his background? One hears that sperm donors are often medical students, but can it be true in this case? How many “donations” did it take by the donor to be able to conceive 150 different children? What is the motivation for this donor? Money? Some genetic desire to spread his “genes” to the multitudes? :rolleyes:
  2. How well has the donor been screened? What if the donor had a rare genetic disease? Or a predisposition to other disorders? Could this result in something “bad” spreading through the entire population rather quickly? 🤷
 
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