Sperm donations from dead men should be allowed

[Barracker]

sperm donations from dead men should be allowed

I can see where this will go.
And I'm thinking, hell no.

Also, isn't it funny how men, who can donate their sperm so easily without any fuss, bother, medical intervention or risk to their health...aren't doing it in sufficient numbers, yet women are risking their bodies and lives to be egg donors and surrogate mothers because we must be altruistic.

Tha forthcoming "opt-out", "presumed consent" organ donation system with "no plans at the current time" to harvest reproductive systems or gametes is starting to look very disturbing.

Just been hearing about this on lbc. It's ethically so wrong and disturbing.

Imagine being a child to a single mother and having to rationalise that your mum couldn't find a partner to be your dad, she couldn't even find a sperm donor as you might try and find them, so she got the sperm of a dead man so that you would never be able to bother them.

I really think we need to be moving away from chemistry lab babies and moving towards a society that enforces the values of a traditional family and having real living human parents that are present in your life. Yes that doesn't always work out - but that should be the basis we start on.

It's slightly macabre to take from the dead without consent, but some of the reactions here are a bit confusing.
Conceiving via sperm donation is very often recommended to single women on mumsnet as a way of having children if they have no suitable partner.
Who benefits from sperm donation most? Women or couples? Seems like a lot of single women benefit.

Pandemic? I'm praying for the asteroid and I'm an atheist.
Seriously this whole idea is just repugnant.

If anything we should be discouraging people from procreating

Quite. The planet is ridiculously over populated thanks to the old fashioned way of procreating. There is no need to come up with these grotesque ways of creating humans.

People are nuts if they think presumed consent was going to be left just to organs

I'll be opting out. I'm hugely against presumed consent. It's a terrifying erosion of freedom. I've commented on this several times on aibu and am always shot down in flames as people wail about all the lives which could be saved.

deydododatdodontdeydo shouldn't the issues for the potential child be put before any of the adults, as they would rightly be in adoption decisions?

Also what happened to "do no harm" as the guiding principle in medicine?

I dunno, but instinctively I feel ‘a kind man made a conscious decision to help mummy become a mummy and you have the option of finding out more about him when you turn 18’ is a lot less likely to fuck you up than ‘when a man died they harvested his organs and sperm because he didn’t visit the opt out website, wasn’t mummy lucky?’

Besides anything else, after death, the final say so is with the deceased’s next of kin, so imagine how the bereaved donor ‘grandparents’ might feel/behave, knowing there might be a living, breathing, genetic connection to your lost loved one out there, somewhere? A child that only exists because you signed the final forms?

I just cannot see a positive reason why someone would be happy to donate sperm after death, but not in life?
I can see some negatives though (‘it won’t affect me, I’ll be dead!’ and ‘definitely won’t have to be financially responsible, even if the law changes!’)

Seems like a lot of single women benefit.

That doesn't make it automatically good.

The only question which matters is this: is it good for the child? Anonymity was lifted because it is in the best interests of the child to be able to know who their father was.

Tbh, the more I think about it (with this and the surrogacy thread), the more I think that those who warned of a "slippery slope" wrt ivf were actually right all along. And no, before anyone asks, I'm not in a position of privilege here - I don't have any children.

Besides anything else, after death, the final say so is with the deceased’s next of kin

This is, I believe, by convention rather than by actual law. Next of kin have few rights in the UK.

It used to be relatives couldn’t veto express permission (such as carrying a donor card/being signed up to the opt in register) but I don’t know how it would work with presumed consent!

So after years of anonymous sperm donation, the rules were changed. Why? For the benefit of donor conceived children, so they could trace their biological fathers. How is using dead man's sperm a benefit to the donor conceived children? And obviously if the dead man had actually wanted to donate while he was alive, nothing was stopping him.

Oh no, that’s all kinds of wrong. Are they going to start harvesting eggs as well? Where does it end?

I’m really puzzled by the repeated assertions about a shortage of sperm donors. The numbers did drop after anonymity was (quite rightly) lifted. But having been through the process of using donor sperm, it’s there. Some people choose it from the US or Denmark because they provide more information about the donors, but if any of you wanted a vial of British sperm tomorrow, you could search an online system and buy one (for treatment via a clinic). And that presupposes that you particularly want British sperm.

Also only 4% of donors (at least at London Sperm Bank) are accepted, so many more men are coming forward to donate than are actually able to.

The sperm bank referred to in the article failed because it had a bonkers business model - as the additional article linked to from that one explains.

I agree it shouldn’t be taken from dead people, btw.

Also, isn't it funny how men, who can donate their sperm so easily without any fuss, bother, medical intervention or risk to their health...aren't doing it in sufficient numbers, yet women are risking their bodies and lives to be egg donors and surrogate mothers because we must be altruistic

That is a completely irrelevant point. Egg donors are often donors because they use it as a quid pro quo of their own infertility treatment. Men have as much right to refuse to donate sperm as I have to refuse to donate eggs, whether inter vivos or dead.

The idea that sperm can be treated as the same as organ donation is awful. I have always said that no reproductive organs or tissue can be taken from me, even for research.

Tbh, the more I think about it (with this and the surrogacy thread), the more I think that those who warned of a "slippery slope" wrt ivf were actually right all along

I was one; and I was right.

The Diane Blood case was awful.

Exactly @TheLidoOfThighs. I know many women - single and in couples - who have used donated sperm. There is issue in getting hold of it.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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