Sperm donor who was told he had no biological children finds son on DNA testing website

DNA testing sites are adding a layer of complexity to the sensitive process of linking sperm donors and their biological families. Illustration / Paul Slater

Children who were conceived from donated sperm in New Zealand will be able to request information about their biological parents for the first time this year. But for those who donated before a 2005 cut-off date the process is more complicated - and increasingly being muddied by DNA testing sites.

While studying as a medical student in Dunedin in the 1980s, John* was encouraged to provide a sperm donation to the local fertility clinic.

At the time, sperm and egg donation was anonymous and donors were told not to seek out recipients. John said that he donated several times at the Otago Fertility Services clinic and then “put it out of his mind”.

That all changed last year.

John’s twin brother was contacted by a man in Queensland who said their families shared DNA. The two families had submitted samples to the popular genealogy company Ancestry.

The Ancestry website showed that the Queensland man’s daughter, 14 years old at the time, shared 27 per cent of their DNA. That meant she was likely to be the granddaughter of either John or his twin brother.

Puzzled by the DNA match, the twin brother called John, who was now a senior doctor with a background in genetic research.

“Do we have any skeletons in the closet?” he asked.

After he got off the phone, John remembered his sperm donations 40 years earlier. Further DNA testing showed the Queensland man was a 50 per cent match for the twin brothers. John said that made it highly likely the man was his biological son.

“It was a bit of a shell shock at the beginning,” he said. “How do I deal with this person who may not know that they are donor-conceived?”

John, 64, and his 40-year-old “donor son” have since struck up an online relationship which he described as “deeply satisfying”.

His case highlights a developing issue in the sector. Historic donors or recipients can struggle to track down their family members through official means because of the passage of time and patchy records.

At the same time, some donors or recipients are instead finding out about biological family members on popular DNA testing websites, often accidentally.

That raises a number of ethical issues because those sites do not have the same duty of care towards donors when they uncover life-changing information.

A law change in 2004 meant children born as a result of sperm or egg donation could find out the identity of their biological parents when they turned 18 years old.

An estimated 50 to 70 donor-conceived children turning 18 in August will be the first cohort legally allowed to seek details about their donor parent from Births, Deaths and Marriages.

Donors or children conceived before the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology (HART) Act face greater barriers to tracking down their biological families. There is a voluntary register in place but users and experts say it is mostly ineffective.

Fertility Plus scientific director Jeanette MacKenzie - whose Auckland-based organisation provides fertility services - said there were not many people on the register and users often lacked the information required to make a match, such as a donor code.

“They have to provide some kind of link to their mother’s treatment - the code their mother used or their NHI number. Otherwise, there is no way the two people can be linked.”

She was aware of a case in which a donor and their biological child were both on the register but were not matched because there was nothing to link them together.

Donor Conceived Aotearoa spokeswoman Rebecca Hamilton said DNA testing had provided information to many donor-conceived people which the voluntary register could not.

Hamilton, who was conceived through sperm donation, tracked down her biological family using the website 23andme. She now advocates for donor-conceived children.

“Anonymity is no longer a promise that can be given,” she said. “And while many of us … have benefited from genetic testing being able to get us the information that the voluntary register could not, it is not an ideal workaround to the problem.

“DNA testing means people - both intentionally and inadvertently - receive life-changing information from a commercial website, with no mechanism in place to support them as they adjust to information that can change everything they thought they knew about themselves and their whānau.”

Donor-conceived children can request help from Fertility Associates to find their biological parents. The organisation offers advice and counselling as part of this process.

After getting the surprise DNA test results on Ancestry, John contacted Fertility Associates to ask for details about any pregnancies that resulted from his donations.

He said he was disappointed with the response. Fertility Associates took more than a year to investigate his case and eventually told him there was no evidence of any pregnancies from his donations.

In a letter, the organisation downplayed Ancestry’s DNA findings, saying the company was unable to determine paternity between identical twins and that its methods were not robust enough to conclusively determine a donor link.

“Further scientific testing would be required to confirm the specific genetic relationship to the person you are referring to as ‘donor son’,” the letter said.

Fertility Associates spokeswoman Val Graham said the delay in responding to John’s request was “unacceptable” and the organisation had apologised to him.

She said Fertility Associates was increasing its capacity to link donors with recipients in anticipation of a flood of requests later this year stemming from the HART Act changes.

However, the organisation currently had limited resources to investigate historic cases like John’s, in which information was not as accessible. Its donor-linking team was mainly focused on newer cases.

Graham said records from Otago Fertility Services had changed hands several times as the clinic was purchased by private owners and then later by Fertility Associates in 2015. Those changes made it more difficult to track down donation records, in particular donor codes.

John said he was certain that the Queensland-based man who shared his DNA was his biological son. He planned to meet face-to-face with him later this year.

“I do genetic research, I deal with this sort of thing all the time, there is no doubt about it.”

*names have been changed at the request of the family to protect privacy

Isaac Davison is an Auckland-based reporter who covers health issues. He joined the Herald in 2008 and has previously covered the environment, politics, and social issues.