DNA = Donors Not Anonymous
By Wendy Kramer,
Huffington Post
| 11. 25. 2015
I can't help but wonder when the sperm banks and egg clinics will start acknowledging that there is no such thing as guaranteed donor anonymity. I addressed this issue in my
recent Huffington Post Blog, and it has been
written about many times over the past ten years, starting with a
New Scientist article from 2005 about a boy locating his donor after submitting his DNA to a commercial DNA website.
A quick review of some of the largest sperm banks and egg clinics finds that not one of them mention in their donor recruitment materials the ease with which, and the growing frequency of donor-conceived people identifying their donors via DNA testing. This is now a regular occurrence.
Many egg clinics not only offer anonymous donors, but actually require anonymity for all involved. Because egg donor children are now getting to the age where they are starting to get their own DNA tested, promised egg donor anonymity is also being shown to be a myth. New family finder type programs make connecting via y-DNA (surname connections) no...
Related Articles
By Riley Beggin and Jeff Stein, The Washington Post | 08.03.2025
The White House does not plan to require health insurers to provide coverage for in vitro fertilization services, two people with knowledge of internal discussions said, even though the idea was one of President Donald Trump’s key campaign pledges.
Last...
By Sayantani DasGupta, MedPage Today | 08.05.2025
It's just a jeans ad.
It's not that deep.
It's just social media outrage.
Should physicians care about the recent American Eagle "Sydney Sweeney Has Good Genes Jeans" controversy? What, if anything, does the provocative campaign have to...
By Editors, Nature | 08.15.2025
A technology that played a key part in saving millions of lives during the COVID-19 pandemic1 should be feted to the skies. Instead, US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr announced last week that the US federal government is...
By Staff, National Women's Law Center | 08.13.2025
INTRODUCTION
Baby bonuses. Motherhood medals. Fertility tracking. You may have heard of these policy proposals as solutions from the Trump administration to help encourage women to have more children.
Besides falling short of ensuring that people have what they need...