James MacDougall: serial sperm donation with fragile X syndrome

[user75]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10868359/Sperm-donor-incurable-condition-fathered-15-children-lesbian-mothers.html

There are huge risks of arranging donation via social media and this is only 1 example. These poor women have even been forced to give this man who was branded "a complex person, with learning difficulties and on the autistic spectrum, with fixed views, concrete thinking and a profound lack of insight" by a judge contact with their children. What a horrendous situation.

His male children won't get fragile X from him, because he doesn't pass on his X chromosome to his male children — he passes them his unaffected Y chromosome, which is what makes them a boy.

His daughters get his X chromosome along with an X chromosome from the mother, which means his female children will have fragile X because one of the two X chromosomes they received is affected.

For boys who do have fragile X, they can experience a more severe form of the disorder than girls, because they don't have another, healthy X chromosome — their other sex chromosome is a Y, which carries very little information.

I really should have worked that out.

To be fair it's 5am.

The three men I know with fragile x are severely effected and have 1:1 care 24/7.

I suspect the sperm donor and the young woman were both vulnerable in some way, through disability or poor literacy.

I understand that he has been named to safeguard other women, which seems appropriate

This is the latest from the Daily Mail.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10875705/EXCLUSIVE-Mother-says-sperm-donor-Fragile-X-syndrome-never-told-incurable-genetic-condition.html

Doesn't mention that the mothers have any particular vulnerability. She says she didn't read the document provided and went on to have a 2nd child with him.

Girls tend to be less affected than boys, but it is likely any affected children will have moderate to severe levels of disability. The condition tends to worsen down the generations. All so sad.

Poor children. I've spent more time and effort selecting socks of a morning than these people spent selecting a biological father for their children.

It would be only female children that are affected I believe because any boys he has with these women will not get his X chromosome

Not so. If the female children carrying one copy of a fragile x go on to have male children there will be a 50% chance that any male off spring will have fragile x.

It causes intellectual disability which in turn causes many mental illnesses. That's why they say it's a cause of autism and for the female carriers even though only carriers they often suffer from depression and major depressive disorder so even though they don't get the full mitigation which presents in a serious disability they are still heavily afflicted.

Early menopause as well.

Yes and seizures and ataxia which is like Parkinsons.

I'm waiting on a result as I think it runs on my family so I've researched it a lot. Under 200 repeats is the pre-mutation and teller levels of repeats like 50 or so have the early menopause and over 130 doesn't. I didn't so I'm supposing maybe I have a higher pre-mutation. I'm wondering if my brother and sister both have full-mutations.

Showing my ignorance here, but do clinics screen for this and all other genetic conditions?
Or could a donor lie?

Just to clarify, no women were “forced to give him contact with their children”. Clearly he did see at least one of the children at some point, but this was the mother’s decision, though clearly may have been influenced by harassing behaviour and her wish for another child. There were vulnerabilities there for sure, which could also explain the very poor decision making in the first place.

But no judge made any such order, as is clear in the article/published judgement/outcome.

I’d like to think naming him will prevent him doing the same thing to other women, but I suspect it won’t stop him trying.

Oh, I’ve just actually seen that one court did allow him contact, for a child where he was in a relationship with the mother. Oh dear. Something must have been missed there, glad Lieven J. got more into it and understood the risks.

Yes clinics screen for it and I'd say he would say they wouldn't take his sperm as basically every female conceived from his sperm would have fragile x