'Sperm donors should be allowed to father more families' say doctors after only 300 men volunteer in a year



Doctors are calling for sperm donors to be allowed to father more families to beat a 'critical' shortage of donations.

The number of children being born from donor sperm is at a record low which many believe stems from a ban on anonymity for donors three years ago.

Data from the world's first study of children born from donated sperm where the father's identity was known shows one in three wants more contact.

Shortage: 500 hundred new sperm donors a year are needed to satisfy demand

Because children born from donor sperm or eggs in the UK can now trace their biological parents when they turn 18, potential donors have been deterred, it is claimed.

A possible solution to the shortage is to allow men to father more than the current legal limit of 10 families, with 15 families becoming the new maximum.

Experts from the British Fertility Society (BFS) say this would only slightly increase the 'very small' chance that children born from the same donor would inadvertently have babies together, raising the risk of genetic defects.

Cold storage: A frozen sperm bank in Manchester

Around 4,000 UK patients need donor sperm each year, which requires a minimum of 500 new donors to meet demand, says an editorial in the British Medical Journal.

But in 2006 there were only 307 new registrations and fewer women than ever are conceiving with a donor father.

BFS chairman Mark Hamilton and BFS secretary Allan Pacey claim many clinics have long waiting lists or have been forced to stop providing services altogether.

Dr Hamilton said: 'There is no real evidence base to suggest that 10 is a critical upper limit. There are some countries like Holland where they permit up to 25 children to be conceived through donor insemination, rather than families.



'This is probably because of the smaller geographical area in Holland and smaller population.

'The concern in setting a limit is the genetic risk of consanguinity. But the safety margin in terms of the number of children which might be conceived in a country like the UK is very great, and the current limit of 10 families per donor is very, very safe.

'It's a matter of cold genetic risk versus society's view of the notion of an individual being associated with more than just a few children.

'We are looking at it through a prism of families today which consist of one or two children but if we look back a few years having a lot of children was the norm'.

He called for a flexible approach as some men might want to potentially father only a handful of children while others would be relaxed about the prospect of fathering many more.

He said 'Some men live in dread and fear of children resulting from donated sperm ringing them up, while others don't mind.'

Happy families: Donors have been put off providing sperm after anonymity laws were relaxed, experts say

He said the BFS believed the 10 family limit was 'more restrictive than it needed to be'.

'It could be increased to 15 families. We are suggesting there should be a debate in society about this.'

Research from the Sperm Bank of California in Berkeley analysed the desires of donor-conceived children, where the donor had agreed to release their identity.

The US still allows sperm donors to remain anonymous if they wish.

The findings showed 39 children requested information on their donor father over a six-year period, representing 30 per cent of those who could have asked for it.

Of these, 59 per cent planned to contact their donor father, seven per cent did not and 34 per cent were unsure.

At least half of the group did eventually contact their donor father and some met him, says data released at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine meeting in San Francisco.

Dr Hamilton said the 30 per cent figure was interesting.

'We don't have the data in the UK because of scant social science research. It suggests that for 70 per cent it's not important to contact the donor.

'Most couples that request donor insemination would like any resulting children to be similar to the parents in terms of physical characteristics and there is some evidence that where there is physical congruity, children may relate to their parents better and feel comfortable growing up to look like their parents.

'However, there is such a shortage of donors that prospective parents take what's on offer and that may not be best for them.'

The BFS wants more resources needed to run late-opening clinics to accommodate would-be donors after normal working hours.

Clare Lewis-Jones, chief executive of Infertility Network UK, said: 'We know from the calls we receive from patients needing donor insemination how devastating it is to not be able to access the treatment they need in order to have a family because of the current shortage of sperm donors, which in some cases is simply because of where they live.'