by Christopher
White
{An interesting 2013 article about sperm donors and the difficulties they create for their offspring in establishing familial ties (emphasis others]- ED}
Infertile parents who
desperately seek a child might see anonymous sperm donation as the solution to
their fertility difficulties. But as the stories in the Anonymous Us collective
reveal, the difficulties faced by donor-conceived children are just
beginning.
In the new film
Delivery Man, Vince Vaughn plays
David Wozniak, a man who discovers that
he’s the
biological father of 533
children—all conceived through his anonymous sperm donations. Now,
almost two decades after his “donations”
(from which he netted over $20,000), 142 of those children have filed a lawsuit
against the sperm bank to reveal his identity.
They want to know their biological father,
gain access to their medical histories, and discover their
roots.
The film is
fictional—but it’s not far from reality. In 2011, the New York Times
reported the story of one
donor with 150 confirmed offspring. There have only been a handful of major studies
following children who were conceived via anonymous gamete donation, yet
certain key trends are emerging as
they reach adulthood. Although these adult children have mixed opinions about
the means in which they were conceived and the limits of such technologies, they’re almost all united in one
belief: anonymity should be removed
from the equation.
Readers of
Public Discourse are already
familiar with
Alana S. Newman,
founder of the Anonymous Us Project and, most recently, editor of Anonymous Us: A Story Collective on
3rd Party Reproduction. In this volume, Newman compiles over one
hundred stories of donor-conceived individuals who, like the kids
in
Delivery Man,
long to
know their biological parents.
“While anonymity in reproduction hides the truth,” writes
Newman, “anonymity in storytelling helps reveal it.” Accordingly, these stories
offer a glimpse into the reality faced
by many donor-conceived children. Some contributions are angry, others are
conflicted. All, however, reveal a deep loss. Consider just a few of the
sentiments shared within the volume:
“Who are you to
deny me half of my family tree—branches rich and strong with stories I may
never be told? Who are you to give away
my heritage, knowing it will be replaced with something
false?”
“I am a human
being, yet I was conceived with a technique that had its origins in animal
husbandry. Worst of all, farmers
kept better records of their cattle’s genealogy than assisted reproductive
clinics … how could the doctors, sworn to ‘first do no harm’ create a system
where I now face the pain and loss of my
own identity and heritage.”
“As a donor-conceived person, I have a sense of being part of an
underclass … Having a child is a privilege not a
right.”
There’s also the story of a young donor-conceived adult
who was raised by a single mother.
After her mother’s early death, she’s since been
desperately searching for her donor father and potential other siblings in hopes that she might have some remnants
of a family to piece together.
Another young woman tells of her own struggle with infertility when
she and her husband were trying to conceive. After telling her mom of their
difficulties, her mom casually suggests
artificial insemination—informing her for the very first time in her life that
this was the means in which she was brought into the world. Countless other
stories capture the experience of donor-conceived children finding out their
origins after their social father is
diagnosed with a major medical condition—only to be told not to worry because it won’t affect them,
since they’re not actually biologically related. The grief stemming from the
medical difficulties is then
compounded by an unexpected family
identity crisis.
The entries included in the
Anonymous
Us collective aren’t just limited to the testimonials from
donor-conceived children.
Stories from
medical providers, sperm and egg donors, and parents who chose to conceive via
this method fill the pages of these raw and emotional testimonials.
While some entries are an effort to justify past decisions, others speak with great candor about the
regrettable outcomes of such a practice.
One Italian sperm
donor reflects on the experience of his own family life and laments that the
children whom he helped bring into this world won’t be able to have similar
memories:
“I have only a sister, but many, many cousins … and every
time I meet them and all the relatives, we love to talk about similarities in the
features, the body, the way we talk and move, because this gives us a stronger
sense of identity and it is beautiful to have such a 'big family' … I hope
this little story can help people in learning from the mistakes of the
past.”
In another entry, a former egg donor regrets the fact that
she’ll never be able to meet her son or daughter, admitting that she only
participated in the practice because of the lucrative financial incentives
attached to selling her eggs: “I don’t even remember what I spent the money on,”
she writes. “Debt, dresses, and dinners probably. I’d give you $10,000 this very
second to meet my kid. Biggest oops of
my life.”
In the United
States, there’s an open and unregulated market for gamete donation. Unlike
Canada and most European countries,
which limit the number of times a man can sell his sperm and have mandatory
database registries where donor children can access their biological parents'
medical histories, the United States enforces no such regulations. This lack of regulation is due, in large part,
to legislators’ failure to listen to the voices of donor-conceived children.
“How can we as a nation make wise decisions about family structure, third-party
reproduction, and gamete donation,” asks Newman, “without the participation of
and insights from those who have been most directly affected by these
practices?”
Just how many
donor-conceived children are born each year is anyone’s guess, due to negligible
tracking and regulation. At a recent conference for fertility-industry attorneys, I
listened to a prominent children’s psychologist (who favors the practice of
third-party reproduction) speak about the potential psychological issues
donor-conceived children might face. In a moment of candor, she admitted, “We never thought about the future families.
We only set out to fix the infertility.”
And this is precisely the problem with donor conception:
the desires of the parents always trump
the needs of the children.
The stories in the Anonymous Us
Project and Delivery Man demonstrate the real suffering and loss felt by
donor-conceived children. Yet, in considering the problem of infertility, we
also encounter countless couples who experience great distress and grief as a
result of their inability to conceive. Infertility is a deeply painful and often
isolating experience for millions of couples.
The CDC
estimates that 10
percent of women trying to conceive are infertile; hence the increasingly
common decision to pursue assisted reproduction. This drive to have children is
understandable; social science research reveals that the presence of children in a
marriage leads to greater happiness, increased financial security, and a lower
likelihood of divorce.
We must
acknowledge the painful truth that, as infertile couples seek to remedy their
suffering through third-party reproduction, they are unwittingly inflicting pain
on their future children.
Eventually, those
children must wrestle with the circumstances surrounding their conception. In
aiming to satisfy their very natural desire for offspring, infertile couples
go to great lengths to create children
who are destined to experience complex crises of identity and
purpose.
This transgenerational suffering
precipitated by the experience of infertility is one that must be met with
compassion, to be sure. Yet we must also
offer a corrective that acknowledges the limits of desire and
love.
Rather than supporting an inward focus on one’s own pain
and loss from infertility, we ought to encourage infertile couples to give deep
consideration to the suffering that children conceived from these technologies
may face. Moreover, rather than privileging one’s own desire for a child as
the ultimate goal, we must encourage a preemptive compassion and empathy that should motivate
infertile couples to refrain from pursuing such
means.
In one of the most revealing entries of
the Anonymous Us collective, a former sperm donor criticizes the
industry he profited from: “I now realize I was wrong. This whole system is
wrong. Please forgive me, but I am
not your father, nor did I ever intend to be.” Similarly, in one of the
scenes from Delivery Man, when one of the donor children discovers
that Wozniak is his biological father, the son seeks to spend time with him. Annoyed by this prospect, Wozniak brushes
the kid off, telling him that he has a real family to attend
to.
Infertile parents who desperately seek a child might see
anonymous egg or sperm donation as
an imperfect, though still acceptable, solution to their fertility difficulties.
But as the stories in the Anonymous Us collective reveal, for the children conceived through these
technologies, the difficulties are just
beginning.
[Note: “They want to know their biological father, gain access to their
medical histories, and discover their roots. ... for the children conceived through
these technologies, the difficulties are
just beginning.”
Indeed, their difficulties
are just beginning. We’ve been told
for decades that “the” Human Genome Project (HGP) had decoded all the genes of “the” human chromosome,
only to learn recently that they missed over half of them -- not to mention that
there is no such thing as “the” human
genome (every human being’s genome is unique), their sample was a pool of samples from people all over
the world, that they admit that they only decoded the “extrons” (about 15-2-% of
the total number of genes), that they skipped the “junk DNA” genes in the
“intron” (about 85% of the genes), that they only decoded a nuclear chromosome --
yet the human genome is defined as all the DNA in a human cell, both
nuclear and extra-nuclear, e.g., mitochondrial, etc. So how could “the” HGP data -- which is
now admitted to be erroneous -- be used as the “blueprint” for any genetic
research experiments or as the source of knowing/understanding any human genes, including those that
donor-conceived children are seeking?
Can’t. (See: http://www.designntrend.com/articles/9627/20131214/never-seen-before-secret-dna-code-unusual-meaning-scientists-find.htm).
And more genes than simply
those from a man’s sperm or a woman’s
“egg” could be involved.
Consider, simply, the epidemic rise in the use of genetic engineering and
the desire for “designer babies” (genetically designed to “prevent diseases”,
even down through the generations, e.g., the recent concerns about “3-parent”
embryos -- or genetically designed to produce children with certain hair and eye
color, etc.), eugenics agendas of many types, etc. Simply put, “genes” are “genes”, and
will act as genes wherever they are injected; any “foreign” genes injected into the
“infertility” or “disease” pictures complicate the donor-conceived children’s
future pain.
What foreign
genes? Producing :desired” genetic traits for
their children would require genetically engineering the sperm, the “eggs”, both, or the embryo
resulting from fertilization. Where do those genes come from that
supposedly would express the desired traits in the children? Usually from early human embryos reproduced by couples who
already express those traits. Those
foreign genes must then be inserted into the sperm, the “egg” or the “embryo” by
means of a vector -- usually a virus or
a bacteria -- both of which have their own genes. If iPS stem cells are used -- i.e., iPS
cells can be coated with a tetraploid
coating, and then implanted, and the iPS embryo can be allowed to develop up
to the formation of germ line cells (primitive sperm and “eggs”) in the embryo,
then those germ line cells are used in fertilization to reproduce a new embryo
(which embryo would retain the foreign genes used during the iPS deprogramming
process, as well as retain those from the tetraploid coating derived by fusing
two embryos together to make the “coating”). This technique requires foreign genes,
in addition to the ones already mentioned, called “transcription factors” -- pieces of
foreign genes derived from early human embryos. Few if any records are kept concerning
the various sources of these genes.
And many of these “splices” of genes are already known to cause tumors. No one is quite sure where any of these genes land once
injected; no one knows for sure what products any of these genes make,
or if all of this manipulation causes serious mutations in any of the genes
involved, etc., etc. How could
donor-conceived children ever find out about any diseases they are genetically
predisposed to now? No
one knows what serious diseases these genes could cause. Very few if any serious records are kept
concerning the “sources” of all these genes. So who’s the “biological donor” now? The man whose sperm was used and
genetically modified? The woman whose “egg” was used and
genetically modified? The embryo who was genetically
modified? The embryos from whom the “desired” foreign
genes are derived that are injected into the sperm, “egg” or embryo? The foreign genes from the viruses or bacteria vectors used? The foreign genes that produce the transcription factors used? The embryos fused to make the tetraploid coating, or the iPS embryo produced. How many “biological” fathers and
mothers could such donor-conceived children end up with?!
And why was the research that should be
required to answer these critical questions never performed before experimenting with vulnerable
infertile patients? ... And why are so many women (and men)
infertile now? Questions,
questions, questions -- with no one giving answers. The article first appeared here. -- DNI]
