A sperm donor in “the Washington area” has fathered at least 150 children. This means that the children are all half-siblings to each other. How would one make a family tree for this situation? There are many other potential problems that could happen as a result of having so many half-siblings.
The term “half-sibling” is used to describe two people who have one parent in common with each other. These people also each have a parent that is not the parent of their brother or sister. Half-siblings share more genetics with each other than do two people who are unrelated. They do not share as much genetics as siblings that have both parents in common with each other.
Sperm donation is one of many medical techniques that can be used in order to produce a pregnancy. A man donates his semen to a sperm bank. The sperm is then used to artificially inseminate a woman who wishes to become pregnant by this method.
Women who are single might choose this method in order to become pregnant. Or, women whose male partners are infertile, or who carry certain genetically heritable diseases, could also choose this method. This is a method that women who have female partners, and who wish to start a family, could use.
It has been estimated that somewhere between 30,000 and 60,000 children are born in the United States every year using sperm donors. Women who become pregnant from sperm donation are asked to report it to the sperm bank. Not all of them choose to. Therefore, the number of children born from sperm donation could be much higher than estimated.
Wendy Kramer is the founder of the Donor Sibling Registry. Her son, who is now an adult, was born from sperm donation. He wanted to know about his genetic origins, and there wasn’t any system set up that could give him that information. So, she created one.
People who were born from sperm donation, egg donation, or embryo donation, and are interested in finding their half-siblings, can use the Donor Sibling Registry to do it. The site can also be used by donors to connect with the children that came from their donation. This is not the type of genealogy research that most genealogists would need to conduct, but it can be very helpful for a large group of people.
One problem with the current system of sperm donation is the anonymity. The donor is identified by a number, but nothing more. Women who use sperm donation do not always let their child know the method that was used to create them.
With so many children being produced from one particular donor’s sperm, there is the potential that those half-siblings will meet, marry, and produce children of their own. Since the two parents are closely genetically related, this increases the risk of genetically heritable diseases being present in their offspring.
Image by Greg Dunlap on Flickr