Sperm donations from dead men should be allowed

How are the donor conceived children supposed to feel when they find out?
It’s certainly not ethically justifiable because there is a scarcity of donors. Men are perfectly free to donate as living sperm donors in their lifetimes if they want to.

I don’t think sperm banks would be informed if a donor died while they still had some of their sperm in storage? So some children may well have been conceived after the donors death, but through accident, not design.

I presume there is an upper limit on age for donators though? Assuming donors are fit, healthy and relatively young men at the time of donation, the odds of them dying before all banks sperm is used is surely very low? Especially in countries where the number of live births per donor is restricted.

It's horrible. I thought it was sperm that had been donated before death but no.... It's collected afterwards.

Men get paid to wank but still don't donate enough!! They should link it to porn subscriptions - there'd be an ocean of sperm!!

an old story

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-502092611_

new story

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-51207678/dna-testing-sperm-donor-anonymityy_

I don't think it's right. I get that a bereaved woman may wish she'd had a child with the man she loved and married but, if a spouse dies young, don't most people grieve but eventually move on? Widows (and widowers) remarry and are happy, have children.

It's gross. What on earth are they going to tell their kids when they're older? Yeuch.

As above, there is reduced price IVF in return for sperm.

Maybe we should question why egg sharing is a thing (coercing poor women into egg donation via the incentive of free/reduced price fertility treatment) but not sperm sharing. Why is there no reduced price IVF if you donate extra sperm for other couples.

Possibly due to relative availability of eggs/sperm.
How many eggs does one woman donate compared to how many sperm a man does?
It seems likely eggs are more in demand than sperm, so there's more of an incentive to donate.

For reduced price IVF, I mean.

There is sperm sharing.

Maybe we should question why egg sharing is a thing (coercing poor women into egg donation via the incentive of free/reduced price fertility treatment) but not sperm sharing. Why is there no reduced price IVF if you donate extra sperm for other couples.

The impact of that has not been explored anywhere but trashy weekly women's magazines.

Actually, that is why there is now a limit to the number of children who can be born from the same sperm donor. I believe that each sperm donor can only donate to 10 families in the UK because it was decided that with 10 the chances of them meeting and starting relationships accidentally was negligible.

I asked my donor conceived child what she thought of this and she said 'That's disgusting. It's a dead dude. Don't mess with a dead dude. I'd be freaked out. That's creepy."

Me: What about if you were given the heart of a dead person if you had heart disease?

"If it were a heart I'd take the heart but if it's sperm - you're not going to save someones life by donating sperm. It's selfish."

And the notion of a dead person as a donor?

"It's as if he never existed for you. It would be sad. Donor conceived people should be able to meet their donors"

@clymene - yes, it looks like the numbers aren't going down, although there might still be an overall shortage/projected shortage compared to demand.
also 1) the ammount of imported sperm (from the US and Scandinavian sperm banks) has increased as a percentage of total UK donors (so now over a third are imports compared to a quarter a few years ago) which suggests that local supply is not meeting demand

and 2) these figures maybe skewed by those women using known men as 'donors' - by freezing in a bank for up to six months and having the bank treat them as the donor this severs the parental obligations and responsibilities and gives the man the legal status of a donor. (this used to be the case a decade ago - don't know if it still is).

Anyway - that's moot. I think harvesting sperm from a dead man to create children is out and out unethical whether or not there is sufficient supply.

There are not dropping numbers of sperm donors @displaycase This is spin put on this weird story by the BBC - presumably in order to have a reason for giving it airtime.

@TheLidoOfThighs has linked to an HFEA report above

Wrong because:

• puts interest of wannabe parents over DC child
• means offspring has a disturbing backstory (culled from the body of a dead man)
• wrongly equates organ donation with gamete donation (gamete donation is about providing half the DNA that makes up you, not a replacement system part)
• ICK factor
• open ID donors is an acknowledgement that knowing your heritage matters. This is a step backwards
• prevents a child from even having the possibility of knowing their donor (and perhaps shifts the burden onto the rest of the genetic relatives who can be traced via DNA testing).

Here you go: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000d7pg

That's a good point @Clymene

There is a lot to explore mentally with infertility, I can understand how you become desperate and reliant on others to help you once you find out you need help.

Gay men obviously know from the beginning that starting a family you will require help from a third party.

I will look up the BBC piece - unless you can post? I only read the online story.

There's something about the disregard for sharing or giving away your DNA material in this that disturbs me. It's so flippant. I often think about children of surrogates or of shared parentage meeting and starting a relationship as adults and not knowing that they share DNA. The impact of that has not been explored anywhere but trashy weekly women's magazines.

I heard that woman on the radio @OhHolyJesus - she was really angry about the lack of ethnic minority egg donors. I got the feeling she felt women should be pressurised into donating eggs.

I thought it was really poor programming on the BBC's part - infertility can drive a lot of women a bit bonkers and I thought it was unfair to broadcast her distress

So basically in a matter of a few short hours Mumsnetter have provided the basis to undermine an article from the BBC.

No wonder I trust this place over our state broadcaster!

Actually it turns out the drop after anonymity was lifted was a blip. UK sperm donor numbers are much higher now.

www.hfea.gov.uk/media/2808/trends-in-egg-and-sperm-donation-final.pdf

Also, to elaborate on a point made above, nearly 80% of eggs donors are not having IVF themselves.

Again, it doesn’t alter the response the article in the OP, but it’s useful to have the facts.

I don’t know how it would work with presumed consent

I believe it remains the same. According to the NHS organ donation and transplants website "families will continue to be involved before organ donation goes ahead". So nothing will change from the family's perspective - they will still be unable to veto. Whether that is a good thing or not depends on your perspective.

The main reason I was never on the organ donor register (despite giving blood and being on the bone marrow register) is that once I'm dead, my loyalty remains with my own mother - if donating my organs makes her suffer more I'm not willing to do it. However, she knows me and generally approves of organ donation so likelihood is she would choose to donate my organs.

Sorry for going off topic!

No, the numbers have fallen now it is no longer anonymous, hence, the modern day Burkes and Hares see a corpse as fair game.

And the reason for this is simple, it makes it inescapable that sperm donation isn't like donating blood. It makes you a father, creates an unbreakable connection with another human being, whether or not they ever see the child, or the grandchildren. And there are implications there of human responsibility and duty even if the law doesn't acknowledge them, people feel them.

People think that we can change these things by simply changing the laws, but we can't.

Thinking about it, there would surley only be limited occasions this could actually happen.

If the man has died of old age, their sperm would be of low quality.
If they died young of disease, you wouldn't want to use their sperm incase of genetic causes for the illness.
If they died of overdose or suicide you wouldn't want it due to potential mental health issues being passed onto the child.
If they died in a violent altercation you wouldn't want their sperm.
So really it only leaves youngish healthy men that died in accidents or were innocent murder victims.

With all these things - sperm donation, egg donation, surrogacy - no one seems to think about the impact on the children. It's a deliberate act of cruelty to bring a child into the world knowing that child will never have the opportunity of knowing its real father.

In the last 7 days I have read about:

A surrogate mother dying in childbirth and her widow crowdfunding for her funeral

A woman complaining about the lack of ethnic minority women donating their eggs and asking the HFEA to advertise for donors

Now this - taking sperm from dead men and it becoming a procedure that happens rather than opting in

And they, on this overpopulated planet, say the future of the human race is at risk (from climate change)? At this rate we will be sending science-made, parent-less babies off into space to colonise habitable planets!

I despair I really do.

I opted out of organ donors since they proposed changes to the 'novel' transplants (and no man is having my womb, no one is) and I'll be checking the laws on this and encouraging DH to opt out and write something into his will if necessary.

Maybe there are moral reasons why men aren't donating their sperm maybe we should preserve individual choice. Is nothing sacred?

If it is morally acceptable that individuals can donate their tissues to relieve the suffering of others in 'life-enhancing transplants' for diseases, we see no reason this cannot be extended to other forms of suffering like infertility," they said

I don't see a shred of equivalence between the 2 situations and have no wish to alleviate the "suffering" of infertility.