Why are sperm donors having hundreds of children?

Some men have multiple children through sperm donation. This week the BBC reported on a man whose sperm contained a genetic mutation that significantly increased the risk of cancer in some of his children.

One of the most striking aspects of the investigation was that the man’s sperm was sent to 14 countries, resulting in at least 197 children. This revelation was a rare insight into the scale of the sperm donor industry.

Sperm donation allows women to become mothers in situations where it would not otherwise be possible (if their partner is infertile, in a same-sex relationship, or parenting alone).

Meeting this need has become a big business. It is estimated that the European market will be the same worth more than £2bn by 2033Denmark is a major exporter of sperm.

So why do some sperm donors have so many children? What makes Danish or so-called “Viking sperm” so popular and does the industry need to be brought under control?

If you’re a man reading this, we’re sorry to break it to you, but the quality of your sperm probably isn’t good enough to be a donor – less than five in 100 volunteers make it.

First of all, you need to produce enough sperm in the sample; this is yours sperm count – then check how well they swim – mobility – and according to their shape or morphology.

The sperm is further checked for survival by freezing and storing it in a sperm bank.

You can be fully fertile, have six children and still be unfit.

The rules vary around the world, but in the UK you also need to be relatively young – aged 18-45; Being free of infections such as HIV and gonorrhea, and not being a carrier of mutations that can cause genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis, spinal muscular atrophy and sickle cell disease.

In general, this means that the pool of people who eventually become sperm donors is small. Half of the sperm in the UK is imported.

But biology means that a small number of donors can produce many children. Only one sperm is enough to fertilize an egg, but there are tens of millions of sperm in each ejaculation.

When donating, men will come to the clinic once or twice a week, which can last for months.

Sarah Norcross, director of the Progress Educational Trust charity, which studies fertility and genomics, said the shortage of donor sperm had made it a “precious commodity” and that “sperm banks and fertility clinics were maximizing the use of available donors to meet demand”.

From this small donor pool, the sperm of some men is more popular than others.

Donors are not selected randomly. It’s a process similar to the brutal reality of dating apps, where some men get far more matches than others.

Depending on the sperm bank, you can browse photos, listen to their voices, and find out what they do: engineer or artist? – check their height, weight and more.

Male fertility expert Prof Allan Pacey, who once ran a sperm bank in Sheffield, is pictured as saying: “If they’re called Sven, they’ve got blond hair, they’re 1.93 meters tall and they’re athletes, they play the violin and they speak seven languages, you know that’s a lot more attractive than a donor who looks like me.”

“After all, people are swiping left and right when it comes to donor matching.”

Denmark is home to some of the world’s largest sperm banks and has become famous for producing “Viking babies”.

Ole Schou, the 71-year-old founder of the Cryos International sperm bank, where a single 0.5ml sperm vial costs from €100 (£88) to more than €1,000 (£880), says the culture of sperm donation in Denmark is very different from other countries.

“The population is like a big family,” he says, “there are fewer taboos on these issues and we are an altruistic society, many sperm donors also donate blood.”

This has enabled the country to become “one of the few exporters of sperm,” Schou says.

But he argues that Danish sperm is also popular because of genetics. He told the BBC that the “blue-eyed and blonde-haired genes” in Denmark are recessive traits, meaning they must come from both parents for them to occur in a child.

As a result, Schou explains, the mother’s characteristics, such as black hair, “may be dominant in the resulting child.”

Demand for donor sperm, he says, comes mostly from “single, highly educated women in their 30s, focused on their careers, and left family planning too late.” They now account for 60% of requests.

one aspect sperm donor research A report published earlier this week described how a man’s sperm was collected at the European Sperm Bank in Denmark and then shipped to 67 fertility clinics in 14 countries.

Nations have their own rules about how many times a man’s sperm can be used. Sometimes it is tied to the total number of children, others limit it to a certain number of mothers (so each family can have as many related children as it wants).

The main argument for these restrictions was to prevent half-siblings who did not know they were related from meeting each other, forming relationships, and having children.

However, as long as the rules are followed in each country, there is nothing to prevent the use of the same donor’s sperm in Italy, Spain, then the Netherlands and Belgium.

This creates conditions in which one sperm donor can legally father multiple children. Although the man often remains in the dark about this fact.

“Many recipients, as well as donors, are unaware that sperm from a single donor can be used legally in many different countries; this fact should be better explained,” says Sarah Norcross, who argues that it would be “sensible” to reduce the number of children a donor can have.

In response to an investigation into the sperm donor who passed on the gene that caused cancer to some of his father’s 197 children, authorities in Belgium called on the European Commission to create a Europe-wide sperm donor registry to track the movement of sperm across borders.

Deputy Prime Minister Frank Vandenbroucke said the sector was akin to the “Wild West” and that “the mission of providing people with families has been replaced by a real fertility business”.

The European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology has also recommended a limit of 50 families per donor across the EU. This system would still allow one donor’s sperm to produce more than 100 children if families want two or more babies.

Concerns have been raised about the impact on children conceived through sperm donation. Some will be happy, others will be deeply saddened by the double discovery of both donor sperm and being one of hundreds of half-siblings.

The same goes for donors, who are often unaware that their sperm is distributed over such a wide area.

These risks are magnified by readily available DNA ancestry tests and social media, where people can search for their children, siblings or donors. In the UK, there is no longer anonymity for sperm donors and there is a formal process by which children learn the identity of their biological father.

Cryos’s Mr Schou argues that further restrictions on sperm donation will lead families to “turn to the private, completely unregulated market”.

Medical ethicist Dr. from Lancaster University. John Appleby said the consequences of such widespread use of sperm were a “vast” ethical minefield.

He said there are issues around identity, privacy, consent, dignity and more, making it a “balancing act” between competing needs.

Dr Appleby said the fertility industry had a “responsibility to have control over how many times a donor is used”, but agreeing global regulations would undeniably be “very difficult”.

He added that the proposed global sperm donor registry presents its own “ethical and legal challenges”.