Nobody knows exactly how many children are conceived with donated sperm, but an estimated 30,000 to 60,000 such babies are born in the U.S. each year. According to The New York Times, many of these children have more half-siblings than their parents bargained for. One mother, Cynthia Daily, used a donor registry to trace at least 150 children to the same sperm donor who fathered her son. "It's wild when we see them all together — they all look alike," says Daily, who sometimes vacations with other families who used the same donor. But such large pools of related offspring face increased risk for rare genetic disorders, not to mention accidental incest between donor siblings. Is it too dangerous to let one man father 150 kids?
Yes, we need an intervention: It's nice that so many infertile couples are having kids with the help of sperm donors, but the U.S. donor-bank industry needs to be regulated, as in other countries, says Sam Biddle in Gizmodo. Granted, "a government eye on the conception of children" is a little spooky, but I'd rather err on the "sci-fi dystopian" side than deal with gene mutations and the "gross factor of half siblings having sex on a large scale."
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