As DNA Donors’ Secrets Emerge, What Should the Children Know?
By Amy Dockser Marcus,
The Wall Street Journal
| 05. 27. 2022
Tyler Sniff took a home DNA test at 32 years old and unexpectedly learned that the man who raised him was not his biological father. When Mr. Sniff shared the discovery with his siblings, they asked their parents for an explanation. Their parents revealed that they had used an anonymous sperm donor in order to conceive their six children.
The realization that his parents had kept his origins a secret from him stunned Mr. Sniff, now 34, an environmental lawyer who lives in Atlanta. He began researching the rules surrounding donor conception. There were federal regulations about blood tests donors must take and state laws addressing that the parents and not the donor are recognized as responsible for the child. But when it came to Mr. Sniff’s right to know his own genetic background, the government was mostly silent.
Mr. Sniff, who has since co-founded an advocacy group, recognizes that his parents’ decision to use an anonymous donor is responsible for his existence. “I am grateful for my life,” he says. But as an adult, he felt his right to...
Related Articles
By Ryan Cross, Endpoints News | 08.19.2025
Human eggs are incredibly rare cells. The ovary typically produces only 400 mature eggs across a woman’s life. But biologists in George Church’s lab at Harvard University — a group that’s never content with nature’s limits — just got a...
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 Harry Hunter, PET BioNews | 08.11.2025
The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology has announced plans to publish a POSTnote and called for submissions on surrogacy law in the UK and internationally.
The current UK surrogacy laws, largely based on legislation from the 1980s, have been...
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...