Yesterday I posted the report’s recommendations to leaders in the law.

Below are the recommendations to leaders in health policy and practice.  (All nineteen recommendations can be found on pp. 77-81 of the report.)

Reactions welcomed.

To leaders in health policy and practice:

Require counseling.

Mandatory counseling of donors and parents, and would-be donors and parents, should be in place, and should include a full exploration of what is known about the life course experience of donor offspring.

Set limits on the number of offspring born to any one donor.

Some nations set this limit at around ten or twelve offspring per donor, which seems far more humane, from the donor offspring’s point of view, than the current American Society of Reproductive Medicine recommendation for setting the limit at twenty-five offspring per donor.

Pediatricians and other health professionals must confront the implications of treating children conceived through anonymous donations.

In the United States it is legal to conceive children using anonymous donor sperm or eggs. At the same time, the genetic, heritable basis of disease is increasingly important in the practice of medicine. What is the position of pediatricians and other health professionals on the practice of anonymous donation, conceiving children who will have dozens or hundreds of unknown half-siblings, parents not telling their children or their children’s doctors the truth about the child’s biological origins, and sperm and egg banks not being required to track the health of donors and keep parents informed about genetic diseases that donors might develop in the future? These questions can no longer be in the domain solely of fertility doctors. It is time for our nation’s pediatricians and other health professionals to confront, wrestle with, and take a firm stand on these issues of urgent importance to a generation of young people.

Categories: My Daddy's Name is Donor

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