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May 20, 2008 2:57 pm US/Pacific
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Website Helps Children Find Sperm Donor Siblings
(CBS 5)
What if all you know about your father is a number on a frozen vial of sperm? What if that sperm helped father dozens of other children? Would you want to know them?
Thanks to a website, that's an option for 2-year-olds Clare and Liam Donohue of San Francisco. They've bounced into this brave, new complicated world of high tech families thanks to their mother.
Jeanine Donahue never met the right guy. But since she wanted a family, Jeanine decided to use a sperm bank to help her conceive the two adorable twins.
The sperm came from an anonymous donor. The only details about the donor include vague physical characteristics and the number found on the vial of sperm that she purchased. It turns out that kind of information has helped the Donohue Family come into contact with other children, conceived from the same sperm donor.
Donohue now knows of eight offspring from the same donor and they're all over the country. She's even been in touch with two of the families She's been able to achieve this feat by accessing the
Donor Sibling Registry on the internet.
The Registry was created by Wendy Kramer from Colorado. She began the registry after her own son began asking questions about his genetic origins.
Ryan Kramer was conceived with the help of a sperm donor. "Growing up my whole life I had all these questions," said the articulate 18-year-old. "You know when I looked in the mirror, I could see two distinct parts of myself. There were the parts physically, emotionally and intellectually that came from my mother' side of the family and then there was this whole half of me that came from this completely unknown source."
The source is unknown because unlike some countries, American sperm banks require anonymity. But the Kramer family discovered, if you post the sperm donor's ID number, half-siblings could connect with each other. Not only that - some sperm donors are connecting to their children that they helped conceive.
So far, Ryan has found out about 10, possibly 20 half-siblings. One half-sibling who is three years younger was coincidentally born on the same day. He has yet to meet his sperm donor father. The donor has not come forward.
Wendy explains how the website has helped match up well more than 5,000 half siblings to half siblings as well as donors to offspring. The registry has about 750 donors on the website willing to make themselves be known.
Participation in registry is completely voluntary and privacy is respected. Ethicist Dr. Katrina Bramstedt agreed privacy should be kept, because that's why some donors give. These donors may have already moved on with their lives and have their own wives and children.
However, Dr. Bramstedt believes there should be greater limits on how many times a donor can donate sperm, given that he could father hundreds of children and those children may one day intermingle in ways that would be imprudent.
The only possible trump card to reveal a donor's identity might be medical genetics. When donors donate, they're typically screened at the time for medical issues. But health or inherited problems may crop up later on. Dr. Bramstedt said it's important that donors try to contact sperm banks to update their medical histories. But the Donor Registry is also a place for families to go to see whether any health problems have emerged in children conceived with certain donated sperm.
The Registry is also open to egg donors. While the process of donating an egg is more complicated than donating sperm, the practice may be responsible for roughly 8,000 new American babies born each year.
(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)