Published: September 5, 2011
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.
As more women choose to have babies on their own, and the number of children born through artificial insemination increases, outsize groups of donor siblings are starting to appear. While Ms. Daily’s group is among the largest, many others comprising 50 or more half siblings are cropping up on Web sites and in chat groups, where sperm donors are tagged with unique identifying numbers.
Now, there is growing concern among parents, donors and medical experts about potential negative consequences of having so many children fathered by the same donors, including the possibility that genes for rare diseases could be spread more widely through the population. Some experts are even calling attention to the increased odds of accidental incest between half sisters and half brothers, who often live close to one another.
2 comments:
Hey Lindsey,
My name is Raeanne and I am a Donor Offspring. I'm so happy I found your blog and would love to learn more/ become more connected to this community. I (as many of us are) am very isolated in this issue. I do some speaking in twin cities on occasion about being Donor conceived and I would love to be more connected to what's going on and happing. My email is block139@umn.edu and I welcome any contact that any other dc people would like to engage in. Thanks for this site- great resource!
I thought this article was very informative. So much so, that I posted a review about it that I thought your readers would be interested in.
http://yourbabywishes.com/blog/blog1.php
The issues in this article, and even the title alone, is alerting to the overwhelming amount of children born from one donor. It is obvious that sperm banks are not monitoring live births. It is so important that laws are put into enforcement to put a stop to this.
I feel like donor families and also donors are overwhelmed by this sort of information and perhaps shy away from making connections.
Thank you again for the excellent article. Looking forward to more.
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