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The sperm of a man carrying a rare cancer-causing mutation was used to conceive at least 67 children, 10 of whom have since been diagnosed with cancer, in a case that has highlighted concerns about the lack of internationally agreed limits on the use of donor sperm.
Experts have previously warned of the social and psychological risks of sperm from single donors being used to create large numbers of children across different countries. The latest case, involving dozens of children born between 2008 and 2015, raises fresh concerns about the complexity of tracing so many families when a serious medical issue is identified.
“We need to have a European limit on the number of births or families for a single donor,” said Dr Edwige Kasper, a biologist at Rouen university hospital in France, who presented the case at the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics in Milan.
“We can’t do whole-genome sequencing for all sperm donors – I’m not arguing for that,” she added. “But this is the abnormal dissemination of genetic disease. Not every man has...