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Sperm from donor with cancer-causing gene at Denmark's European Sperm Bank was used to conceive almost 200 children across Europe
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- Published
- Dec 10 2025
- Word count
- 1472 words
Like the article says, you can't really screen for everything, but why are people allowed to conceive with sperm used by 200 people in the first place? (in the article there's another guy's sperm that was used 550 times!)
Even though it's a really small chance still, but I feel like learning that you have more than 100 siblings out there would be jarring in some way to the kid, right? I never knew one of my grandparents because she left my mom's family when she was super young, but sometimes in the back of my mind I'm always wondering if I know someone who might be my unknown cousin or something even though they're probably in China lol. Maybe it's just me!
The Danish standard (that was put in place after this guy and others had so many kids) is a maximum 12 families (i.e. if they all want 2-3 kids we're talking dozens of half-siblings).
Even that sounds like a lot to me. I understand that it's hard to get both sperm and egg donors, but it just seems strange for all the kids who then end up with very complicated family situations due to no fault of their own.
Or I could just be old and out of touch.
I imagine that getting desirable donors is even harder. People want donors who are well-educated, physically and mentally healthy, tall, attractive, etc. — a fairly small population.
Honestly, maybe people should aim for donors whose parents/grandparents/aunts/uncles all live to be ripe old age without mental/inheritable illnesses. Nope, young man in their peak tall and handsome please . :| families are told even now, in this article that
They're told they're all healthy sperm so might as well pick tall handsome of your target shade.
I don't blame families: i blame the industry. They said they already excluded 99% of donors before families even get to pick. There's a heavy information asymmetry for both donors AND buyers
Edit:
Hey maybe there's a market for freezing gametes collected from donors in their peak youth, and then just keeping them frozen until they're in their 80s and report having had a good life without middle aged burnout, resurfaced CPTSD traumas, late neurodivergent diagnoses*, no cancers, relatives all did well, not prone to addictions, etc, sorted by final networth balanced with satisfaction from life. (* Not against ND, being one myself, but the missed childhood diagnosis might be indicative of neglectful parenting or unsupportive environment)
Twelve families seems reasonable to me. If each family had one child, there would only be twelve kids out of over one million children in Denmark. Even with all of them having three, that's still 36 kids total. So long as the twelve families aren't all in the same town, the odds of accidentally getting together with your half-sibling are fairly low, which is one of the big concerns with these mass donors.
The relationships of children conceived via sperm donors can vary. Some might consider each other siblings and treat each other as close family, while others are more distant and keep to their nuclear family. The way I see it, most donor-conceived children typically already have a "complete" family so any half-siblings would be basically bonus relatives. But then, I'm an only child, so it might feel different for people with siblings?
I think they have to be considered at least close genetic kin: be on the lookout when dating, confirm with genetic counselors before making marriage plans, and keep an eye out for genetic information like this that affects health. Beyond that, odds of becoming friends or feeling sibling level kinship probably no different from wider population: afterall, not all full blood same mom same dad siblings are close.
Worse, siblings who are strangers could inadvertently end up conceiving children with birth defects.
Related: Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, has over 100 biological children from sperm donation. One IVF clinic in Russia even openly advertises a service of having a baby from Durov's sperm.
I audibly "ew'd" at the offer
This is great of him though, whatever else I feel about this
No, no he's not. From his own Spermageddon article:
Men who have even 1% of low don't need his donation at all: they just need their own. Even if they have just a single one they don't need his help.
Spermageddon is about difficulties with unassisted conception and a prompt to look into environmental factors as well as pollution and diet, NOT for severely narrowing our generic diversity down to a few egolomaniacs.
co-incubation only needs 75k sperm, and ICSI only one
(Wikipedia IVF)
The sperm and the egg are incubated together at a ratio of about 75,000:1 in a culture media in order for the actual fertilisation to take place. A review in 2013 came to the result that a duration of this co-incubation of about 1 to 4 hours results in significantly higher pregnancy rates than 16 to 24 hours.[56] In most cases, the egg will be fertilised during co-incubation and will show two pronuclei. In certain situations, such as low sperm count or motility, a single sperm may be injected directly into the egg using intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). The fertilised egg is passed to a special growth medium and left for about 48 hours until the embryo consists of six to eight cells.
And we're nearly there for making it happen with 0 sperm
There is NO shortage of sperm. There is a disastrous "mysterious" decline of count per man but there's no world shortage of overall number of gametes such that his donation is making anything better. If he really wanted to help he'd sponsor / lobby for couples to get free ICSI or encourage more men to donate. This reads to me like just some ego thing that some crazies will champion for racial purity reasons.
I can believe that this is an unfortunate tragedy.
BUT.
I want to see the entire gametes and embryo market much more heavily scrutinized. At the very minimal families need to know about this specific case: that there is NO way to know for sure the gametes are 100% safe, that there are families out there who had to bury a child after wrestling with IF, that there is no regulation on how many genetic kin are out there.
Yes you are rolling the dice with the regular home baked kids as well. But the industry specifically SELL on perceived screening and perceived better chances. Our screening technologies are only as good as our knowledge. Families need to know which claims are just marketing.
From the donor side, person can put anything they want on those forms. There's no way to verify family illness history beyond how tall / healthy the donor is right now. The psychologists doing the assessment are hired contractors. They never asked to see graduation diploma or official transcripts. I wish intended parents knew a significant number of donors are starving college kids who swap info on how to maximize their sale of gametes.
I always found the whole à la carte donor thing problematic and not just for this easily predictable incident but because of the loss of genetic variability, the less individuals we use the higher the chances of getting Gros Michel-ed
Sure, it's not a problem for now, but that also means it's also the best moment to introduce laws for random selection and forbidding multiple children from one donor