Europe’s booming fertility industry has been rocked by revelations that the sperm of a Danish donor used to conceive at least 197 babies carried a cancer-causing genetic mutation that has already led to the deaths of some children. Switzerland’s strict regulations make scenarios of this scale unlikely. In recent years, sperm donation has produced family trees of unprecedented size, stretching across countries and, in some cases, continents. Stories of “mass donors” have captured public attention, most recently through the Netflix documentary series, The Man with 1,000 Kids. It focused on a Dutch donor whose sperm was used to conceive hundreds of children across the world, exposing loopholes in the industry’s regulations. Such cases have raised concerns not only about the psychological impact on children who discover they have dozens of half-siblings but also highlighted the risk of consanguinity – the possibility of unknowingly forming relationships with close genetic relatives. An ...
