With today’s release of “My Daddy’s Name is Donor: A New Study of Young Adults Conceived Through Sperm Donation,” the fertility industry and the physicians who claim to abide by a code of ethics should be ashamed.

Co-investigators Elizabeth Marquardt, Norval D. Glenn, and Karen Clark, have done what the medical profession failed to do since the first recorded donor insemination was instigated in Philadelphia in 1884. This report and survey – the first of its kind – delves into the medical and social experiment that is anonymous donation conception.

Unfortunately, the medical establishment and fertility industry have utterly failed the children they helped to bring into the world by being dismissive, uninterested or else openly hostile to our lived experiences.

I have experienced this first hand.

Physicians, schooled in science, are steeped in the scientific method: research, hypothesis, test, analysis and conclusion. They’ve done the test and have the results, but they have never, ever followed up with the resulting children and asked what we think of this whole business.

Schooled in science, they do not have the knowledge or expertise to handle the psycho-social impact of reproductive technologies on the individual and the family, yet they continue to hold unearned power and influence when shaping sperm and egg donation policy.

Medicine’s tradition is that of the Hippocratic Oath: “first, do no harm.”

They have done harm and have continued to do harm since 1884. Had they followed up with their experiments, in the same way this study does, and truly listened to what we say, I could forgive them. Unfortunately, many of the physicians who run the fertility clinics continue to ignore or dismiss what we say as being a “bitter few.” As this study proves, we are not a few, and even if we were only a few, how many people are necessary to call into question this practice? I realize my perspective is one of many, but as per the report, a significant majority disagree with the anonymous system.

I have no doubt the physician who helped my parents achieve their pregnancy meant well. This was before the advent of large commercial sperm banks. He was an OB/GYN who did sperm donation on a small scale. He saw an infertile couple who desperately wanted a child and he wanted to help. I do not fault him for this. However his intentions were short-sighted and misplaced. Once my mother was pregnant, the physician considered his job done. Amazingly, in his view, that’s where his influence ended.

Later, when I was 19, I visited that same physician. I had absolutely no information. No medical history, no profile, nothing. I remember making the appointment. The secretary didn’t know what to do with me when I informed I wasn’t seeking inseminations, instead I was a product of it and wanted to meet the physician.

I sat across from him and I don’t think he had the slightest understanding why I was there or what I wanted. I knew he would never divulge my biological father’s identity to me, so I asked for the health and non-identifying information.

In 2001 I was told by a medical doctor to “not worry he was healthy, I did a verbal medical check.” In 2001, knowing everything we know about preventative medicine and genetics, a medical doctor had just said he had no paternal health history to share with me. Incredulous, and highly ironic. He gave what little information he had about height, weight etc. on a small grubby piece of hotel stationary. He also informed me my biological father was male and Caucasian. That was very useful information.

In the meantime, I had started speaking to policy makers and politicians. I also attended a few industry conferences, where physicians, clinics and nurses exchanged their professional expertise. I quickly realized I was a black sheep there. Much like my experience with the physician who engineered my conception, people in the infertility industry didn’t know what to say to me. The message was clear: I wasn’t supposed to be there. I was supposed to be somewhere else with no thoughts or feelings about all of this. You would think that the people who devote their careers and their lives to helping people achieve pregnancy would be interested in the lives of the people they helped create. Perhaps it is too much to fathom that perhaps the basis of what they do is unethical and causes harm. It’s better to pretend those babies never grow up to have thoughts and feelings of their own.

So to Elizabeth Marquardt, Norval D. Glenn, and Karen Clark, I say thank-you for listening to us, respecting us and caring about the lives of people born from reproductive technologies. You have done something that medical establishment should have been done a century ago.

Tags: business, clinics, doctors, fertility, physicians, sperm donation
Categories: General, My Daddy's Name is Donor, Reproductive Technologies

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