Canada follows the trend?

Over the water in British Columbia, Canada, the state government is appealing a judge’s ruling that people conceived by egg and sperm donation should be able to find out who their donor was. Olivia Pratten and Shelley Deacon, both donor-conceived adults from BC, took the government to court arguing that donor-conceived people are discriminated against …

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Genes reunited?

In a recent scientific breakthrough at Newcastle University, doctors have found a way to replace faulty DNA inherited through the female line with DNA from another healthy woman. So does this mean a child conceived that way has two mums? Mitochondrial cells convert the energy from our food into energy that can be used in …

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Dragon babies

In the Chinese year of the Dragon, many couples are trying to have a child because it’s considered a lucky year to be born. The same applies to people who need a donor. Bevan Chuang from Auckland is hoping to get pregnant through sperm donation and her request for a donor has attracted interest from …

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Sperm donors redundant?

Scientists have created artificial mouse sperm in the lab, in a breakthrough which means in five years infertile men may no longer need a sperm donor. Researchers grew viable sperm in a petrie dish using mouse germ cells, which are found in testicles and are responsible for sperm production. For the first time the sperm …

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Donor satisfaction survey – what egg donors want

We’ve already written about what sperm donors want, but what do egg donors think would improve their donation experience? Ongoing support during the donation itself Clinics are good at offering counselling for egg donors but the nature of the treatment means that donors would often like ongoing support during the donation too. (This is one …

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Canada follows the trend? Genes reunited? Dragon babies Sperm donors redundant? Donor satisfaction survey – what egg donors want

Feb
20

Canada follows the trend?

by gametedonation

Over the water in British Columbia, Canada, the state government is appealing a judge’s ruling that people conceived by egg and sperm donation should be able to find out who their donor was.
Olivia Pratten
Olivia Pratten and Shelley Deacon, both donor-conceived adults from BC, took the government to court arguing that donor-conceived people are discriminated against because adoption laws allow adopted people access to identifying information about their birth parents. There is no law that records should be kept for people conceived from sperm donation, so they are routinely destroyed. This makes it impossible to identify the donor and also to access information about their genetic health, which is important to the donor-conceived person and their children.

I find I have a vested interest in it not so much for myself, but for my children. There are diseases, illnesses, that skip generations, so I could unknowingly be passing something on to my children. That’s a bit scary.
Shelley Deacon

Part of the state government’s defence is that it is likely to significantly decrease the number of people offering to donate; donor numbers did not drop in the UK after 2005 and the number of sperm donors has started to go up.

The lawyers are arguing that UK law – amongst that of other countries such as Sweden and Australia – demonstrates a worldwide trend towards greater openness. It will be fascinating to see whether Canada follows this trend.

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Feb
06

Genes reunited?

by gametedonation

In a recent scientific breakthrough at Newcastle University, doctors have found a way to replace faulty DNA inherited through the female line with DNA from another healthy woman. So does this mean a child conceived that way has two mums?

Mitochondrial cells convert the energy from our food into energy that can be used in the body. They also carry inheritable female DNA. Mutations in the mother’s mitochondria can result in a range of serious diseases in her children, including muscular dystrophy, hearing or sight loss.

Based on IVF, the technique is yet to be fully tested and embryos have never been implanted into a woman, so it is still possible the theory may fail. If it succeeds, the child would have less than 1% of its genetic inheritance from the egg donor, just the new ‘batteries’ that give instructions to the child’s cells on how to produce energy. Every other trait, all the things that we normally consider meaningful about genetic relationships such as physical appearance and abilities, comes from the genes of the two parents. But given it allows the child to be born healthy, it’s a significant contribution to their personal history.

Is 1% enough to count? We know some donor-conceived people care a great deal about who their donor is, but that’s a much closer biological relationship. In a world where tracing your ancestors is a common hobby and there are thousands of members of sites like 23andme.com who are interested in their distant cousins, it is not impossible that some people would wish to follow this up.

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Jan
30

Dragon babies

by gametedonation

In the Chinese year of the Dragon, many couples are trying to have a child because it’s considered a lucky year to be born. The same applies to people who need a donor.

Bevan Chuang from Auckland is hoping to get pregnant through sperm donation and her request for a donor has attracted interest from all over New Zealand. She spoke about her desire for a Dragon Baby partly to raise awareness of the impact of a spike in the birthrate in the many countries with a large ethnic Chinese population, including the UK, and the need for public services to plan around this. She also comments:

It is due to my age – being a 30-year-old single woman; I am increasingly worried about missing my chances of having a child of my own. It is selfish for sure, however, I know children born to older women suffer more health problems. It would cost the child more in the future.

Must I have a child now? No. I do, however, want to have a child before I turn 35.

Good luck to Bevan in her wish to have a child.

So does that mean 2012 is a good year to become a sperm donor? Well, there’s no better time to become a donor than the right time for you – and all babies born through donation are lucky.

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Jan
23

Sperm donors redundant?

by gametedonation

Sperm (c) Esther Simpson / Etherase
Scientists have created artificial mouse sperm in the lab, in a breakthrough which means in five years infertile men may no longer need a sperm donor.

Researchers grew viable sperm in a petrie dish using mouse germ cells, which are found in testicles and are responsible for sperm production. For the first time the sperm they grew was free of genetic abnormalities so it could have been used to create healthy baby mice.

This is an amazing development that could revolutionise fertility treatment and allow every man to be a natural father.
Stephen Gordon, male infertility specialist

While sperm donation allows couples to have a child they long for, men can find it hard to get over the sense of loss at being unable to have a child who’s genetically related to them. Treatment for infertility is not the same as a cure, but this could alleviate one of the hardest issues to get over.

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Jan
16

Donor satisfaction survey – what egg donors want

by gametedonation

We’ve already written about what sperm donors want, but what do egg donors think would improve their donation experience?

Ongoing support during the donation itself

Clinics are good at offering counselling for egg donors but the nature of the treatment means that donors would often like ongoing support during the donation too. (This is one reason the NGDT runs the donor mailing list.)

Clear information on aftercare

Donors need clear advice on what after-effects they might experience and an idea of what is normal. The relationship between the clinic and the donor needs to be good enough that a donor can contact them with what may seem like a minor concern to an expert, but which can cause unnecessary worry and distress.

A review of pain relief offered after egg collection

Although most egg donors described their donation as ‘problem-free’, most experienced some pain after the collection. Because donors generally viewed it as part of the process, they didn’t always say when they wanted more pain relief and clinics didn’t always tell them they could ask.

…and some things in common…

Egg and sperm donors have some common needs: counselling and clinic appointments at times that are easier to arrange around working hours, advice on ways of discussing donation with friends and family and a much clearer understanding of contact arrangements about the outcome of the donation.

We’re running this satisfaction survey to find out from donors themselves what would improve things for donors. The more people fill in the survey, the more impact it will make. We’re already looking at ways we can work with clinics to change things based on these results, so your contribution is important.

If you’ve been a donor (or thought about it and decided not to) then please take ten minutes to let us know how things went.

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Dec
25

Best wishes for the season

by gametedonation

By Laura Hughes, Trustee

This is an advent calendar that I made for the kids when they were little – it has both their names at the top. I made it as I was so utterly overjoyed after 10 years of infertility and a total of 19 cycles of fertility treatment to have the pair of them.

Every year I fill it with chocolates and I remember all those whose journeys were not so fortunate and who are still trying.

Laura's hand-stitched advent calendar

We’re taking a couple of weeks off. Have a peaceful holiday and see you in the New Year.

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Dec
19

“My £10 sperm donor made me infertile”

by gametedonation

The donor was meant to be the answer to Toni’s prayers. Instead it was the start of a living nightmare.

The front page of this week’s That’s Life magazine has a story about a couple, Toni and Tina, who needed to find a sperm donor to help them conceive. They weren’t able to afford to go through a clinic so they found a friend of a friend who was willing to give them his sperm. Unfortunately he didn’t realise he had two sexually transmitted diseases, which he passed on to Toni. By the time they were diagnosed, she had had an early miscarriage and ended up with an ovarian cyst and pelvic inflammatory disease. Eventually she had to have a hysterectomy.

While most stories of informal sperm donation don’t end so badly, the health risks are certainly there and need to be considered. Chlamydia in particular rarely shows symptoms in men but can cause endometriosis and scarring of the fallopian tubes which can make a woman infertile. At a fertility clinic, there are strict testing requirements and the donor has to be clear of STDs over a period of time before his sample will be used to help a couple conceive.

There are good reasons why people choose to work with known donors – having contact with their donor while their children are still young and getting to know each other are just two. But it is legal to bring a known donor to a clinic, and the clinic can then run proper checks on the fertility and general/sexual health of both the donor and recipients, and advise on how likely conception is.

Of course, there are other important issues related to informal donation, such as donors being identifiable, but the potential health risks are real, not just a scare story.

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Dec
12

Donor satisfaction survey – what sperm donors want

by gametedonation

Early results of the NGDT’s Donor Satisfaction Survey are out, so here’s what sperm donors think would improve their donation experience.

More information on the families helped

Most sperm donors were interested to know the number of pregnancies that had resulted from their donation and the number of families they had helped. Donors aren’t paid – they’re doing it to help – so they’re looking for recognition that they’ve made a difference.

Better clinic communication

Donors are well informed about the implications of being identifiable to the adults conceived from their donation, but some other aspects were unclear, such as the need for abstinence, reimbursement of expenses or what they could ask about the outcome of their donation.

Help with the goodwill message

Some donors found it hard to know what to write in the goodwill message, and would have appreciated some support or guidance on what a donor-conceived adult would want to know.

Convenient location

Some donors travel a distance to get to their clinic and said that appointments outside normal working hours would make it easier, as they wouldn’t need to take time off work.

We’re running this satisfaction survey to get information to work with clinics to improve things for donors. It’s open until June 2012 and these comments are based on the first set of results.

The more people fill in the survey, the more impact it will make. If you’ve been a donor (or thought about it and decided not to) then please take ten minutes to let us know how things went.

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Dec
06

A little respect

by gametedonation

The HFEA recently researched public attitudes towards donation, and one of their findings is, given more information about what donation involves, people have far more admiration for donors.

As part of the Donation Review, the HFEA commissioned a market research company to talk to different groups of people about their views on donation and how they would feel about some of the changes they were considering making. One of the groups interviewed was the general public – people with no previous involvement in egg or sperm donation.

Most of the people they asked started with quite stereotypical ideas of who donors are. Their mental picture of the average sperm donor was a student donating sperm to earn some cash, while women were motivated to donate eggs by wanting to help a friend or family member in need.

They were given some information telling them what donation really involves, and then asked for their thoughts about donors after reading it.

“Given a chance to reflect on donors and their actions, most argued that they had taken for granted a gift which was an extraordinary and unique one. They felt that they had badly underestimated the discomfort, inconvenience and commitment involved in donation, and had emerged from their reflection with much more admiration and respect for donors.”

They had already assumed that egg donors were altruistic, so it was their attitude towards sperm donors that changed most dramatically. All it took was finding out the lengths donors went to to help others.

If you’ve been a donor, do the people around you realise just what an amazing thing you have done?

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Nov
28

Fairer on children – fairer on donors too

by gametedonation

Ireland’s Special Rapporteur on child protection has expressed ‘profound concern’ that the complete lack of legislation on assisted reproduction in Ireland is not in the best interests of the child.

Geoffrey Shannon, a lawyer who specialises in child law, is concerned about a number of issues relating to egg and sperm donation. Egg and sperm donors are anonymous in Ireland, meaning that donor-conceived children have limited or no information about their biological parent or genetic heritage, and this is just one of the issues he has raised.

In the absence of any laws, Ireland’s fertility clinics follow guidelines set out by the Irish Medical Council or the UK’s HFEA, which are not always appropriate in a different legal and cultural setting. The Irish Medical Council’s guidelines forbid the destruction of stored embryos, so clinics are legally obliged to continue storing them even if they have been abandoned by the patients who created them, and there has recently been a case where an Irish fertility doctor declined to treat an unmarried couple.

One difficulty with this is that it is not clear who the legal parent is of a child born through egg or sperm donation and there are many discussions about whether removing anonymity would affect the number of donors – issues which we are very familiar with on the other side of the Irish sea.

The law is an important reference point that reflects and guides both ethics and practice. While many would argue that UK fertility law is far from perfect, at least it is clear that a sperm or egg donor gives up parental responsibility and that they are no longer anonymous. This means donors know what they are getting into before they donate, and that there are mechanisms for donor-conceived adults to trace their donor should they wish to. This may not be to everyone’s liking, but it is fairer on donors as well as donor-conceived people.

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