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Ivo Landmann
online editor
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Ivo Landmann
online editor
After Jan Karbaat, Jos Beek and Jan Wildschut, another “cheating doctor” was discovered using his own sperm for treatments in a fertility clinic. These things are coming to light more and more often and it’s no coincidence.
Commercial databases make finding anonymous donor fathers much easier, so more sperm donor scandals could follow. According to attorney Tim Bueters, who represents child donors, the main question is how much. “You wonder: Is this the tip of the iceberg?”
Anonymous seed donation was still possible before 2004 and this encouraged abuse. These are often only discovered now. “We’ve been overtaken by science. More and more is possible,” Bueters says News & Co on NPO Radio 1. “It can be found more and more on the Internet via Facebook and there are DNA databases. These ensure that donors are found or, in this case, unmasked.”
Almost all stories about abuse and flaws in clinics begin with a search on commercial websites where DNA relationships can be investigated, says Ties van der Meer, president of the Donorkind Foundation.
These types of websites, like MyHeritage and Ancestry, are primarily for family tree research. “People use these databases to look them up roots. But even donated children want a family tree, “she emphasizes. “Only a few doctors once decided that this is not allowed.”
NOS President Ties van der Meer of the Donorkind Foundation
He is also a donor child. He had been looking for his biological father for years, but the ball only started rolling after registering on such a commercial website. “A parentage test like this is very simple. You will receive a test tube at home. You have to spit in it, send it back and then compare it with all the other DNA profiles in the database.”
Initially this did not yield much, but after three years it was successful. “A stepsister unknowingly registered on the same site and that’s how I found a match.” She didn’t get much further, because Van der Meer’s donor father didn’t want any contact. “Fortunately, many other donors are open to this.”
It’s not just child donors they go looking for. It often happens that people accidentally discover through DNA matches that they were conceived with donor sperm, without anyone telling them. Then a painful conversation often follows, says Van der Meer. “We hear stories like this every month. They are not accidents.”
Jelmer, one of more than 40 children donated by Zwolle gynecologist Jan Wildschut, spoke about his experiences in 2022:
Donated baby Jelmer was conceived by his mother’s attending gynecologist
Stories in which donated children are found to have dozens of half-brothers and half-sisters are rarer. “We know about twenty groups of people with many half-brothers and half-sisters, I mean more than thirty. With so many children with the same father something strange always happens. Then very often sperm from a donor is used.”
Maaike Janssen is one of these donor children. She has 110 half-brothers and sisters, she says News & Co. “I see many recognitions. Sometimes they are just the mirror of the other. It was said that it is just a seed. But that is not true. DNA is much more than a simple seed, a building block. And sometimes it is really the essence of people.”
“Community”
Janssen found the donor father, half-brothers and sisters through the non-commercial Fiom KID-DNA database, which is specifically targeted at the relationship between donor and donor child(ren). “We started with eight and eventually grew to more. We also have many brothers and sisters who didn’t know they were conceived with donor sperm. They found out by chance through another database.”
Donor children can connect with each other more easily than before via social media. Van der Meer’s non-subsidized foundation also plays a role in this, she says. “We have communities that donor children can join secretly. Sometimes they don’t want their mother or parents to find out they’re looking for them, for fear of offending them.”
Many of these donor children still have questions. Sometimes it takes years for their digital quest to become reality. But small steps can go a long way, says van der Meer. Only a small percentage of people need to be registered. With 2% you already have data for almost all existing families and can find a DNA match for almost everyone.”
2024-01-10 21:12:53
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