Oprah Show on Sperm Donors Misses the Positive View
The February 8, 2008 broadcast of the Oprah Winfrey Show aired a segment on sperm donation. The show included as guests three donors who had agreed to be identified to now grown children who had been conceived using sperm that they had donated to sperm banks many years ago. The show also included children conceived through sperm donation who wanted to find the identity and to establish relationships with the donors who had provided half of their genetic makeup. The show also included a film of two half siblings, brother and sister, who met for the first time and who later joined the show live. The program did not include any representatives from sperm banks or lawyers representing the rights of anonymous donors. Obviously the show did not include any of the many former donors who wished to remain anonymous.
The show presented a skewed view of the varied interests involved in this issue and therefore conveyed a rather one sided picture of this topic. The show seemed to indicate that all Donor Insemination (DI) recipients and offspring want to meet their donor yet there are many who want the donor they used to remain anonymous forever. It is important not to breach that donor anonymity just because someone wants to know their donor. To do so would violate representations and contracts made by the sperm bank to its anonymous donors and parents who used an anonymous donor on condition of anonymity of the donors. In response to the desire of some to have known donors, most major cryobanks have a class of donors who have agreed in advance to have their identities and contact information released when donor-conceived children reach age eighteen. It is interesting that those who use donor sperm still overwhelmingly prefer to use anonymous donor sperm, even when offered the choice of donors who are willing to be known. Also in countries such as the United Kingdom that now require that all donors be identified, there is now a severe shortage of sperm donors. Breaching anonymity would have a negative impact on those women who wish to use this approach to parenting now or in the future.
The program also left the impression that sperm donation is unregulated and that recipients are blind as to the medical histories of the donors. Most sperm banks, however, provide more information on their anonymous sperm donors than any person could reasonably obtain about their spouse. Medical histories go back three generations. Medical tests include a battery of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), genetic diseases and physical exams looking specifically for things that can be passed to a recipient or child. The FDA regulates a huge part of this process, as they do for blood donation and organ donation and the standards are very high. There are childhood pictures, some have adult pictures, and detailed interests, and audio interviews, personality tests and the list goes on and on. The only thing missing is the identifying information and the opportunity to make a physical connection with the sperm donor. The medical and family information are there. Parents have the freedom to share or not share this information with their children; from the nature of the conception to the details of the donor’s history. Society protects this reproductive freedom.
To expose donor identities is not appropriate nor is it reasonable to encourage children from donor insemination to find a ‘daddy’ as they look for their donor. This was clearly the case in several situations on this show. Donors offered donor sperm and were not active partners. The law does not and society should not treat them as if they were. As one donor said on the show, when he donated sperm he saw no difference between that and donating blood. At the time all these children on the show were conceived, sperm donors were available to offer women the means to have these very much wanted children. Oprah did little to celebrate this reality as every child on that show would not have existed except for the availability of sperm donation.
The show presented a skewed view of the varied interests involved in this issue and therefore conveyed a rather one sided picture of this topic. The show seemed to indicate that all Donor Insemination (DI) recipients and offspring want to meet their donor yet there are many who want the donor they used to remain anonymous forever. It is important not to breach that donor anonymity just because someone wants to know their donor. To do so would violate representations and contracts made by the sperm bank to its anonymous donors and parents who used an anonymous donor on condition of anonymity of the donors. In response to the desire of some to have known donors, most major cryobanks have a class of donors who have agreed in advance to have their identities and contact information released when donor-conceived children reach age eighteen. It is interesting that those who use donor sperm still overwhelmingly prefer to use anonymous donor sperm, even when offered the choice of donors who are willing to be known. Also in countries such as the United Kingdom that now require that all donors be identified, there is now a severe shortage of sperm donors. Breaching anonymity would have a negative impact on those women who wish to use this approach to parenting now or in the future.
The program also left the impression that sperm donation is unregulated and that recipients are blind as to the medical histories of the donors. Most sperm banks, however, provide more information on their anonymous sperm donors than any person could reasonably obtain about their spouse. Medical histories go back three generations. Medical tests include a battery of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), genetic diseases and physical exams looking specifically for things that can be passed to a recipient or child. The FDA regulates a huge part of this process, as they do for blood donation and organ donation and the standards are very high. There are childhood pictures, some have adult pictures, and detailed interests, and audio interviews, personality tests and the list goes on and on. The only thing missing is the identifying information and the opportunity to make a physical connection with the sperm donor. The medical and family information are there. Parents have the freedom to share or not share this information with their children; from the nature of the conception to the details of the donor’s history. Society protects this reproductive freedom.
To expose donor identities is not appropriate nor is it reasonable to encourage children from donor insemination to find a ‘daddy’ as they look for their donor. This was clearly the case in several situations on this show. Donors offered donor sperm and were not active partners. The law does not and society should not treat them as if they were. As one donor said on the show, when he donated sperm he saw no difference between that and donating blood. At the time all these children on the show were conceived, sperm donors were available to offer women the means to have these very much wanted children. Oprah did little to celebrate this reality as every child on that show would not have existed except for the availability of sperm donation.
posted by Kathleen, Contributing Editor at
11:22 AM
1 Comments:
It's not about what the parents or the donors or the clinics want. It should be about what the children want, and donor-conceived people are overwhelmingly against anonymity and secrecy. Even those who aren't interested in finding their own donor feel that they should have the right to do so.
What the sperm banks tell people about how they test donors and report their medical history, and what actually happens are two very different things. It seems to be routine practice at some clinics to ignore potential problems, then refuse to help if anything goes wrong. There is almost no real regulation in the US to ensure that donors with medical problems are weeded out, and there have been cases where sperm banks have carried on selling sperm for years after it should have been clear that the donations were resulting in serious genetic problems in the children.
See this article for instance:
http://www.self.com/magazine/articles/2006/10/23/1006donor_single_page
The CCB ignored warnings about one donor, then lied about it, even falsifying a document presented in court, yet they are still in business. Shameful.
The FDA only seems interested in preventing disease transmission to recipients, rather than in the health of the future children.
The numbers of sperm donors in the UK have actually gone up in both since years since anonymity was ended btw, reversing a 3 year decline.
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