Nuffield Report: Parents Should Decide Whether or Not to 'Tell'
By Wybo Dondorp,
BioNews
| 04. 22. 2013
Last week, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics presented its
report on ethical aspects of information sharing in donor conception. Although the moral acceptability of third-party reproduction is still debated, this report importantly starts from the position that there is nothing wrong with services helping people to have children with donated gametes.
However, donor conception is much more than just another reproductive option. Challenging issues related to compensation of donors or payment for gametes were addressed in the Nuffield Council's earlier report
Human bodies: donation for medicine and research. In this new report the Council looks in depth at another ethically relevant aspect of donor conception: the fact that the use of gametes leads to genetic connections between the future child and the donor. These may or may not be regarded as socially significant by the several parties involved, and that may or may not lead to actual relationships between them and might have medical significance as well.
Read more...
Related Articles
By Anna Collinson and Jo Adnitt, BBC | 08.18.2026
At least 30 children, most of them British, are feared to have been conceived by IVF treatment in northern Cyprus using the wrong sperm or egg donors.
In each case, the parents suspect they did not get the donors they...
By Dan Falk, Nautilus | 08.20.2026
The pseudoscience of eugenics, founded on the mistaken notion that nature envisions some “right” combination of genes, and that selective breeding can improve the human race, is making a comeback. While the heyday of eugenics was a century ago, the...
By Anna Louie Sussman, The New York Times | 08.21.2026
Since in vitro fertilization was invented nearly 50 years ago, at least 10 million children who would not otherwise exist have been brought into the world. New constellations of families — older moms, same-sex parents, single dads — have flourished...
By Jenni Fink, Newsweek | 08.19.2026
“Donald Trump” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
President Donald Trump's latest effort to limit birthright citizenship could have consequences for the international surrogacy industry, potentially affecting thousands of intended parents from overseas who travel...