Annotation 3:Sperm bank and inadvertent incest

reference: http://news.discovery.com/human/sperm-donor-overdependence-incest-accidental-111009.html Discovery
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/209570/20110906/sperm-donor-sperm-bank-150-children-fertility-clinc.htm The International Business Times


‧The New York Times ran a story this week about a 48-year old woman who discovered that her son - conceived through artificial insemination - had 149 siblings, with more on the way.

‧Inbreeding(使同系繁殖) - and for that matter, large numbers of children with the same parent - can spread genes responsible for rare diseases, potentially increasing the prevalence of those diseases.

‧Unlike in some countries such as France and Britain, there are no laws in either Canada or the United States officially limiting the number of children who can be born from a single donor, the Canadian health ministry said.

‧Specialists warn over-reliance of one donor increases the risk of the transmission of genetic diseases and malformations(殘疾), and some say there are dangers of inadvertent incest(亂倫) between half-siblings.

‧We can't exclude the possibility that children of one donor can meet and have sex, and children, and indeed the possibility that the donor himself could have sex with his daughter," said Stevens, who has made films about his search for his real father and his half-siblings.

‧"People who seek sperm donation are from the same socio-economical status. They know each other, they are advised to see the same doctor, they live in the same neighborhood. It's not randomly distributed," she said.


‧"We have a group of 150 children of one donor, and this number keeps growing," said Wendy Kramer, executive director and co-founder of the registry which she established in 2000 to connect so-called donor families.
"It's overwhelming for those kids, and we don't know how they will react."