A system supposed to guarantee the partial anonymity and biological safety of children from sperm donations shattered in the Netherlands. According to International mailwhich relays a survey of the public channel NOS and the newspaper Nrcat least 85 sperm donors have largely exceeded the fixed legal thresholds, giving birth to dozens, even hundreds of children.
Since 2018, Dutch regulations have limited the use of the same donor to twelve families. But “for the first time, we know the number of descendants for each donor in the Netherlands”, explains gynecologist Marieke Schoonenberg on behalf of the association of gynecologists and obstetricians (NVOG). Result: some “mega-doors” are at the origin of 26 to 40 children, and in some cases more than 50, or even up to 75.
Clinics have also violated the rules
This slippage was revealed thanks to the creation in April of a retroactive national register, which now centralizes donors data since 2004 – the year when the anonymous donation has been prohibited in the country. Previously, each hospital kept its own register, which allowed certain men to give their sperm in several clinics without coordination, or to the latter to unduly reuse samples.
But donors are not alone in question. According to NOTs, certain clinics have intentionally violated the rules, repeating the seed of the same individual repeatedly “without his agreement or that of the mothers concerned”, or by exchanging unlocked gametes between establishments.
Previous cases with doctors
“The people concerned will never be able to consider the romantic encounters with lightness,” alerts the president of the Donorkind association, interviewed by the public media. “They will have to systematically do a DNA test to ensure that it is not a family member. »»
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Faced with the scandal, the Nvog apologized and invites the families concerned to contact the PMA centers to obtain details. This is not the first time that the practices of medically assisted Dutch procreation have been pointed out. In addition to the institutional drifts, several doctors have already been involved in scandals for having inseminated patients with their own sperm.
