European fertility body urges tighter limits on sperm donation
The European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) has called for continent-wide limits on how many families a single sperm donor can help create, proposing an initial cap of 50 families per donor with a longer-term goal of 15. The recommendation was presented at a conference in London on July 8.
The case rests on three risks that grow with a donor’s reach: rare harmful mutations can be passed to large numbers of children — in one case a Danish donor with cancer-linked genes fathered at least 197 children across Europe — donor-conceived people who discover hundreds of half-siblings report feeling “mass-produced,” and dense half-sibling networks raise the odds of unknowingly forming relationships with relatives.
The practical obstacle is enforcement. National caps do little when donated gametes cross borders, so any effective ceiling requires coordination among European countries rather than rules applied one jurisdiction at a time.