Monday, October 7, 2019

Different misconduct in sperm donation

One reason it is rewarding to study unregulated markets is that it gives you some idea of why some regulation might be desirable.  The growth in DNA registries has allowed many children of sperm donors to identify their biological father, and it also allows donors to identify their children, sometimes with unsettling results.

Here's a story from the Washington Post:

Sperm donor says fertility clinic ‘lied’ after discovering he fathered 17 kids ― most in the same area

"It was 1989 when he gave his sperm to the fertility clinic at Oregon Health & Science University, where he was a first-year medical student, believing his donation would help infertile couples and advance science. The facility promised that once his sperm had conceived five babies in mothers living on the East Coast, the rest would be used for research, Cleary said at a Wednesday news conference. He had assured his wife that the donor kids were far enough away that their own four children could never run into them in their Oregon town, or unwittingly befriend them or fall in love with them.

“So you can imagine his shock,” his attorney Chris Best said at the news conference, “when, after 30 years, Dr. Cleary recently [learned] that no less than 17 children have been born from his donations” ― all of whom were born in the state of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest."

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