By admin on April 20, 2022

This  DSR blog will be paused from 2022-2025 while I focus on writing monthly articles for my Psychology Today blog page:
Donor Family Matters. 

 
Here are links to the 2022 published articles:


3/6/22

Supporting Donor Family Members

Adequate counseling and education are vital.


3/25/22

A Brief History of Donor Conception

Looking at eight centuries of manipulating sperm.


4/19/22

Words Have Power in Sperm and Egg Donor Families

The language of reproductive medicine can be tricky.


5/5/22

Happy Mother's Day to Solo Moms (of Donor Kids)

Personal Perspective: A special shout-out to single mother (only) parents.


5/27/22

Donor Conception: Questions for Prospective Parents

Issues and themes to ponder when considering using donor gametes.


6/23/22

Truth and Honesty in Families of Donor-Conceived Children

Early disclosure is crucial for building a happy and healthy family.

7/21/22

A Dearth of Adequate Gamete Donor and Recipient Counseling

Education and counseling before selling or buying sperm and eggs is crucial.


8/25/22

Are You Thinking About Donating Your Sperm or Eggs?

A few practical, ethical, emotional, and medical issues to consider.


9/26/22

Nature and Nurture in Donor Families

Biological and non-biological parents matter.



10/26/22

Tips for Parents of Adult Donor-Conceived People

Are you about to disclose, or do you have a child who just found out the truth?


11/28/22

DNA: Donors Not Anonymous

Sperm and egg donor anonymity has not been possible since 2005.


12/13/22

Secrecy v. Privacy in Donor Families

Walking the fine line between privacy and secrecy is inherent in donor families.



Here are links to the 2023 published articles:


1/6/23

Why are Sperm and Eggs Still Sold Anonymously?

Personal Perspective: The consequences of donor anonymity.


1/27/23

Cornerstones of the Donor Family: Kindness and Empathy

From choosing a donor to expanding one's family to include donor relatives. 


2/28/23

Tips for Donor-Conceived Adults Who Just Found Out the Truth

The road might be bumpy for a while, with a multitude of difficult emotions.


4/3/23

Donor-Conceived People Who Have Always Known the Truth

Being donor-conceived can have inherent challenges, even if told early on.

4/24/23

Egg and Sperm Donors: It's Complicated

Some common thoughts and feelings surrounding selling one's gametes.


5/8/22023

Donor-Conceived People: Curiously not Curious

Some insist that they are not at all curious about their donor origins.


6/12/2023

Parents of Donor-Conceived People

Researching the thoughts and feelings of biological and non-biological parents.


7/5/2023

Reaching Out to Sperm and Egg Donors

Weighing the risks and rewards when deciding whether to attempt contact.


7/27/2023

Why Is There a Shortage of Black Egg and Sperm Donors?

Creating a more diverse donor landscape.


8/7/2023

Donor-Conceived Children Meeting Their Half-Siblings

Widening one's family circle with enriching, lifelong relationships.


9/5/2023

Gamete Sellers: It's More Than Just a Financial Transaction

Common themes, topics, and issues that arise with former egg and sperm donors.


10/2/2023

Sperm Banks, Egg Facilities, and the Backfire Effect

Why have gamete sellers been resistant to evolving ideas about donor families?

11/1/2023

Contacting a Gamete Donor for the First Time: The Letter.

You might not get a second chance to make a first impression.


12/4/2023

Donor Offspring: Curiosity, Connecting, & Attachment Theory

Securely attached individuals are more likely to have a positive experience.



Here are links to the 2024 published articles:



1/4/2024

DNA Matters: Psychological Differences in Donor Families

Accurate and updated mental health information is vital for families and donors


1/25/2024

The Ethical Sperm Bank: An All-Open Sperm Bank

An idea whose time has come.


2/26/2024

The Problems With Donor-Sibling Groups of 50, 250, or More

Important medical, psychological, and social implications for donor offspring.


By admin on January 21, 2022

The History of Donor Conception


Early History

1322
Artificial insemination (referred to as AI until the 1980s) was first used successfully by the Arabs on mares.
1425-1474
Unofficial history claims that the first attempts to artificially inseminate a woman were done by Henry IV, nicknamed "The Impotent".
1784
The first artificial insemination in a dog was reported by the scientist Lazzaro Spallanzani (Italian physiologist,1729-1799). This insemination resulted in the birth of three puppies 62 days later.
1790
This method of conception was first attempted on a human being in the year 1790 by the English physician Dr. John Hunter after previously completing the procedure in moths. Dr. Hunter (1728-93) was a brilliant surgeon known for pioneering research in venereal diseases, child development, and the lymphatic system, among many other things. Although he liked to experiment on himself -- particularly unfortunate in regards to his research into syphilis and gonorrhea -- the official surgeon of England's King George III was also was known to instill within his patients an equal zeal for self-experimentation.  When a young married man desperate to have a child with his wife came to him in 1790 with a grim condition known as hypospadias, in which the urethra basically takes a wrong turn out the underside of the penis, Hunter developed a plan. He equipped his patient with a collection of large syringes and a prescription for frequent masturbation. He was to collect his semen and inject it into his wife's vagina. Tragically, the exact details of their bedroom antics are lost forever, but the fellow did reportedly follow doctor's orders over the course of two years. By most accounts, a single pregnancy resulted, and Dr. Hunter had proven the possibility of artificial insemination in humans. But it would be a while yet before any physician would formally take up the cause of assisted reproduction.
1866
The practice spread to the United States in 1866 when Dr. J. Marion Sims of North Carolina conducted a series of fifty-five inseminations with varying degrees of success.
1884
The earliest recorded AI in a medical institution took place at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia by Dr. William Pancoast. It was so secret that even the woman being inseminated wasn't told that the sperm was from a donor, not her husband. A fascinating story worth telling here:
In 1884, Dr. William Pancoast of the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia went rogue and decided to have a little scientific fun with one of his patients, a Quaker woman who had long been unable to conceive. After many examinations, he decided that the fault in fact lay with her husband's low sperm count. The man, an elderly merchant many years older than his wife, was officially shooting blanks.
Rather than inform her and her husband of the sad state of affairs and move on from a point of full disclosure, Dr. Pancoast summoned the wife to one final "examination." As the woman lay unconscious and chloroformed on his table as six of Dr. Pancoast's students looked on, the good doctor injected into her cervix a large syringe full of semen - freshly donated by the student democratically deemed by the group to be the most handsome.
This unnamed woman delivered a healthy baby boy nine months later. Presumably, all were ecstatic. The only problem was that Dr. Pancoast never actually informed her about what he did to her on the table that fateful day. Whether it was to spare her the embarrassment of her husband's sterility, or whether it was simply to see if he could do it at all, Dr. Pancoast's experiment remained a secret success for 25 years.
It was only after Dr. Pancoast died -- a quarter-century after the successful insemination of his presumably pleased patient -- that the truth became known. In 1909, one of the students present that day, the suggestively named and incredibly handsome Dr. Addison Davis Hard, fessed up and published a letter in the journal Medical World containing all the dirty details. It is interesting to note that Dr. Pancoast did actually inform the woman's husband of what he had done, and that they had decided together to spare her the truth. In addition, before the letter was published, Dr. Hard took it upon himself to tell the by-then all-grown-up baby boy as well. Hopefully, his mother was not a subscriber of Medical World in her old age.
1890-1910
AI gained acceptance and popularity in Europe and Russia. In 1897 Dr. Heape, an outstanding reproductive biologist from Cambridge, reported the use of AI in rabbits, dogs and horses. And in 1899 the first attempts to develop practical methods for artificial insemination were described by Ilya Ivanovich Ivanoff (Russia, 1870-1932). Although Ivanoff studied artificial insemination in domestic farm animals, dogs, rabbits, and poultry, he was the first to develop methods as we know today in human medicine.
1894-1909
1n 1909, Dr. Hamilton claims to have used artificial insemination for fifteen years, "without a single failure".
1924-1928
In 1924, Rohleder in a survey; of the world's literature was able to find only 123 cases reported, whilst in 1928 Engleman, in a further survey was only able to increase this figure to 185, of which sixty-five had been successful.
1937
Huhner, writing in 1937 claims to have begun extensive use of the practice in 1915.
1941
In the United States alone, AI resulted in ten thousand successful pregnancies. In England, the first publication of a modern account of what was then called "Donor Insemination" (DI) was produced in the British Medical Journal. The doctor behind the research, Mary Barton, was vilified in the press and condemned worldwide. Dr. Mary Barton stated that over a period of five years about 300 children had been conceived as a result of artificial insemination.
1941
In 1941 it was reported that 9,489 women had been successfully impregnated and that 97 percent of the pregnancies had terminated successfully. These figures were compiled from a questionnaire sent to 30,000 doctors, of whom 7,643 replied, and of these 4,049 reported that they had carried out successful impregnations.
1940s and 1950s
AI was carried out discreetly by private medical practitioners. It was decided that it was best to leave unregulated (and remains so today). Parents were told to never tell anyone, not even the child. (This practice of secrecy continues on for decades, and is still recommended by some "experts", even today.)
1951
Further evidence as to the extent of the practice in the United States is the statement made by Ploscowe to the effect that by I95I the number of children born as a result of artificial insemination had risen to 20,000.
1953
As a result of this research, the first successful human pregnancy with frozen spermatozoa was reported in 1953.
1955
A NY Post article in 1955 estimated the number of children conceived via AI to be 50,000, and growing by 6,000 per year.
1963
At the present time responsible estimates indicate the rate of one thousand to twelve hundred births per year, although higher estimates are offered.


More Recent History:
1970s
The sperm banking business becomes popular and commercialized.
1979
Of 711 physicians likely to perform artificial insemination by donor surveyed to determine their current practices, 471 responded, of whom 379 reported that they performed this procedure. They accounted for approximately 3576 births by this means in 1977. In addition to treating infertility, 26 per cent of these physicians used the procedure to prevent transmission of a genetic disease, and 10 per cent used if for single women. Donors of semen were primarily from universities, were only superficially screened for genetic diseases, and were then matched phenotypically to the recipient's husband. Most recipients were inseminated twice per cycle. Only 17 per cent of physicians used the same donor for a given recipient, and 32 per cent used multiple donors within a single cycle. Only 37 percent kept records on children, and only 30 per cent on donors. The identity of donors usually was carefully guarded to ensure privacy and to avoid legal complications.
1987
The Office of Technology Assessment made visits to 3 sperm banks and 10 in vitro fertilization clinics.
A total of 1,558 questionnaires were completed and returned by the sampled physicians (a response rate of 61 percent), which included 37 physicians in the cross-sectional sample and 385 fertility society physicians regularly doing artificial insemination, i.e., seeing four or more insemination patients per year. An amended survey form was also sent to 30 U.S. commercial sperm banks identified by the American Association of Tissue Banks (MTB) and the American Fertility Society (AFS), and 15 of those forms were returned. The survey estimates that 172,000 women underwent artificial insemination in 1986-87, at an average cost of $953, resulting in 35,000 births from artificial insemination by husband (AIH), and 30,000 births from artificial insemination by donor (AID).
These incomplete numbers from 1986-1987 are still used today by the media and by industry experts. This has led many to the false conclusion that there is some entity requiring record keeping on the children born from egg and sperm donations. While SART insists that they have accurate numbers on the number of egg donor births, research finds that more than 40% of parents were never asked to report the birth of their child.
The often-cited figure of 30,000 births per year is based on an extrapolation from a very small number of voluntary survey responses. These figures are further confounded by a sharp decline of practitioners at that time, due in part to increased quarantine requirements (including restrictions against fresh semen) resulting from the circa 1984 discovery that semen could transmit the HIV virus.
Prior to the AIDS crisis, donor insemination was likely much more prevalent in small clinics and doctor's offices in the absence of fresh semen restrictions. In the years following the OTA report, the prevalence of large sperm banks and increasing acceptance and popularity of the technology suggests figures have likely grown considerably. As a result, the OTA figures most certainly under-represent reality.
1953: First successful pregnancy using frozen sperm.
1977: First successful in vitro fertilization (IVF) pregnancy achieved (although no birth resulted.
1978: First baby born from IVF (Louise Brown, in England).
1981: First IVF baby born in the United States (Elizabeth Jordan Carr).
1983: First successful egg donation at UCLA.
1984: First baby born from a frozen embryo (Zoe Leyland, in Australia).
1990: First child born following pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD).
1992: First successful pregnancy using intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).
1996: A 63-year-old woman in California gives birth using a donated egg.
1997: First successful birth using frozen eggs.
1999: Natalie Brown, younger sister of Louise Brown, becomes the first IVF baby to naturally give birth to a child.
2003: A 65-year-old becomes the oldest known woman in the world to give birth using a donated egg.



Co-written with Ryan Kramer
Cartoon by Jen Moore


By admin on December 07, 2021


I've always been aware of this concept in regards to running businesses and organizations, including the Donor Sibling Registry. Our organization (and its website) has continued to grow and evolve over the past 21 years. At times this has been extremely challenging, and even painful, but nevertheless crucial in order to continue serving the needs of all those in the donor family.

"The high price of doing nothing" was highlighted in the news yesterday, and it got me thinking about the cost of doing nothing to repair the broken parts of the sperm and egg selling industry. In too many areas, that industry has done very little to reflect the honesty, openness, and transparency that donor families have been requesting for decades.  We regularly hear about children's health issues that never should have happened and medical information that was never shared. Donors report trying to juggle more than 50 or 100 offspring and too many donor-conceived people are crushed when their "open" donors turn out to be not so open. Donor families have paid the price, over and over and over again.  While there may be a huge financial cost to adequately address and repair some of these issues, the negative toll that these unaddressed matters have taken on donor family members is immeasurable.

A few to ponder:
  1. The lack of adequate counseling and educating of parents and donors before donating/purchasing gametes.
    Parents and donors are not making fully informed choices/decisions that affect them (and their children) for decades to come.
    62% of 1700 sperm recipients had no pre-insemination counseling.
    80% of 164 surveyed sperm donors said they were not counseled or educated about offspring curiosity.
    62.6% of 363 surveyed egg donors reported not receiving counseling on potential future fertility issues.

    This would be costly as if donors were adequately and honestly counseled and educated, many would not donate.

  2. The lack of comprehensive medical/genetic testing of donors.
    The FDA only mandates testing for communicable diseases (STDs) and a small handful of other diseases, (which have all been reported by DSR families).
    Thousands of medical issues have been reported to the DSR, too many that could have been avoided.
    74% of 485 donor-conceived people who wish to make contact with their donors list learning more about their medical backgrounds as a reason for the desired contact.

    Full and adequate genetic testing of donors would be costly and many donors would not be accepted. 

  3. Sperm banks/egg facilities not updating and then sharing medical information between donors and families.
    Many sperm banks and egg clinics claim to ask their donors for yearly medical updates.
    Earlier research reports that 85% of 164 sperm donors and 97% of 155 egg donors have never been contacted by their clinic/sperm bank for a medical update, while 23% of the sperm donors and 31% of the egg donors felt that they, or a close family member, had medical/genetic issues that would be important to share with families.
    2021 surveys of 345 egg donors showed that 94.3% were never contacted for a medical update while 25% indicated that they did have a medical issue that would be important to share with families.
    74% of 485 donor-conceived people who wish to make contact with their donors list learning more about their medical backgrounds as a reason for the desired contact.

    It would be expensive to contact donors regularly for medical updates and then share that information with the families that purchased the gametes.

  4. Selling all gametes as “anonymous”, for 18 years or forever.
    DNA= Donors Not Anonymous. It has not been possible for donors to remain anonymous for more than 16 years.
    73% of surveyed donor-conceived people answered “yes” to “if your donor is anonymous, do you wish that your parents would have used a known or willing-to-be-known donor?"

    While it is time-consuming and costly to mandate/promise/enforce anonymity (impossible) and then try finding "open" donors 18 years after donation, (sometimes impossible) it might be more costly to abandon selling the idea of anonymity as that might result in fewer donors. Additionally, more money would need to be spent on adequately educating donors and parents about anonymity no longer possible, and what that means for their families.

  5. Lack of accurate record-keeping on the children born to any single donor.
    There are no accurate records of the children born to any single donor, not by sperm banks or egg facilities.
    42% of 108 surveyed egg donor parents were never asked to report their births.
    45% of 1700 surveyed sperm donor recipients had no request by the sperm bank or clinic to report the birth of their child(ren). 31% of those say that the sperm bank is unaware of the birth of their child. 

    It would be costly to accurately track all the births to any single donor which might include mandating the reporting of births and would also entail figuring out how to track the 22%-28% of donors who donate to more than one facility.  

  6. Limiting the number of children born to any single donor.
    Half siblings groups over 100 and even over 200 are now not uncommon. These large half-siblings groups are challenging to all members of the donor family, for many reasons.

    If donors knew that their donations might result in 50, 100, or 200+ kids, they might not donate. It would greatly impact a facility's revenue to sell less of any single donor's gametes.