Sperm Donor With Cancer-Causing Gene Fathered Nearly 200 Children Across Europe 72
schwit1 shares a report from CBS News: perm from a donor who unknowingly carried a cancer-causing gene has been used to conceive nearly 200 babies across Europe, an investigation by 14 European public service broadcasters, including CBS News' partner network BBC News, has revealed. Some children conceived using the sperm have already died from cancer, and the vast majority of those who inherited the gene will develop cancer in their lifetimes, geneticists said. The man carrying the gene passed screening checks before he became a donor at the European Sperm Bank when he was a student in 2005. His sperm has been used by women trying to conceive for 17 years across multiple countries.
The cancer-causing mutation occurred in the donor's TP53 gene -- which prevents cells in the body from turning cancerous -- before his birth, according to the investigation. It causes Li Fraumeni syndrome, which gives affected people a 90% chance of developing cancers, particularly during childhood, as well as breast cancer in later life. Up to 20% of the donor's sperm contained the mutated TP53 gene. Any children conceived with affected sperm will have the dangerous mutation in every cell of their body. The affected donor sperm was discovered when doctors seeing children with cancers linked to sperm donation raised concerns at this year's European Society of Human Genetics.
At the time, 23 children with the genetic mutation had been discovered, out of 67 children linked to the donor. Ten of those children with the mutation had already been diagnosed with cancer. Freedom of Information requests submitted by journalists across multiple countries revealed at least 197 children were affected, though it is not known how many inherited the genetic mutation. More affected children could be discovered as more data becomes available.
The cancer-causing mutation occurred in the donor's TP53 gene -- which prevents cells in the body from turning cancerous -- before his birth, according to the investigation. It causes Li Fraumeni syndrome, which gives affected people a 90% chance of developing cancers, particularly during childhood, as well as breast cancer in later life. Up to 20% of the donor's sperm contained the mutated TP53 gene. Any children conceived with affected sperm will have the dangerous mutation in every cell of their body. The affected donor sperm was discovered when doctors seeing children with cancers linked to sperm donation raised concerns at this year's European Society of Human Genetics.
At the time, 23 children with the genetic mutation had been discovered, out of 67 children linked to the donor. Ten of those children with the mutation had already been diagnosed with cancer. Freedom of Information requests submitted by journalists across multiple countries revealed at least 197 children were affected, though it is not known how many inherited the genetic mutation. More affected children could be discovered as more data becomes available.
Re:f**k around, find out (Score:5, Insightful)
I was a sperm donor back in the 1990s.
The donors aren't "random".
They are screened for general health, genetic defects, and academic achievement. I had to show my college transcripts, provide a blood sample, and have a medical examination.
TFA describes a screwup that only happened because a test for the condition wasn't available. But many other tests were done, so the odds were still better than an old-fashioned insemination.
Many of the recipients are women in nuclear families, whose husbands have fertility problems.
Re:f**k around, find out (Score:4, Insightful)
One point of interest here... Perhaps the only one: Without artificial insemination, a man gets to spread his genes to fewer than ten offspring, usually.
200 is quite a bit of damage.
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Have I said anything other than AI lets a man spread bad genes more efficiently than normal procreation?
Haven't blamed a single person.
Re:f**k around, find out (Score:4, Informative)
One point of interest here... Perhaps the only one: Without artificial insemination, a man gets to spread his genes to fewer than ten offspring, usually.
200 is quite a bit of damage.
Which is why screening for everything you can screen for takes place. Incidentally you are not the first to think of this. Virtually all countries in the EU have donation limits. For example you can't donate to more than 12 families in the Netherlands. The issue is that sperm export is a thing, and that there's no regulations in place to handle this, meaning you could in theory father 12 children in the Netherlands, 15 in Germany, 10 in France, etc.
People accuse the EU of having too many rules, but the reality is for a common block with free trade and movement, there really aren't enough rules yet.
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Except "everything you can screen for" in 2005 is much more limited than 2025, which itself is much more limited than in 2045. The point is that you're concentrating a potential genetic defect and applying it to hundreds or thousands of offspring, rather than 1 or 3, as is most typical.
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It's the vigorous screening processes which drastically reduces the number of donors to the point that the ratio of donors to interested mothers is extremely low. That guarantees that a small number of donors produce an inordinate number of offspring. It also reduces biodiversity, so any heritable diseases that are currently unknown or unscreenable have a chance to be much more widespread than traditional forms of conception.
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One point of interest here... Perhaps the only one: Without artificial insemination, a man gets to spread his genes to fewer than ten offspring, usually.
200 is quite a bit of damage.
Is that significant in a broader statistical context though? Sure, it is statistically unlucky for the offspring who got this gene. If you consider the number of donors and number of children from other donors though, this fades into insignificance. Especially now that it is known and genetic testing for this defect and many others will be a standard part of all screening in the future. On average, the number of genetic defects inherited from sperm donors is going to be a lot lower than from the general pop
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200 is quite a bit of damage.
So maybe a single donor's sperm should also only be used a few times?
(I admit I have no idea how difficult it is to get donors, so maybe there are so few that their sperm must be used a lot.)
Also: 200 is the number of babies that were born from it. Given that artificial insemination isn't 100% successful, his sperm was probably used much more often than that.
Let's hope his sperm has now been removed from the pool.
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Let's hope his sperm has now been removed from the pool.
I'm pretty sure they keep the samples in separate containers. A big pool of sperm sounds unhygienic.
/s
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Is it true that sperm donors make money hand over fist?
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Is it true that sperm donors make money hand over fist?
I was paid $35 per donation, and was allowed to donate up to three times per week.
So, $105 / week or $5,460 / year.
That would be about $10k / year in 2025 dollars.
The clinic was a ten minute walk from my workplace, so I'd walk there and back on my MWF lunch breaks.
Re: f**k around, find out (Score:3)
Re: f**k around, find out (Score:2)
The nuclear family system has been working since forever
You say that like it's an absolute truth. What do you claim the "nuclear family system" is good at, and in comparison to what other system? On what evidence do you base that claim?
Also "since forever" is most likely untrue, it's at most since humans switched to a sedentary lifestyle based on agriculture, and that's also not true everywhere.
Re: f**k around, find out (Score:3)
Thank you for this very precise reply, it absolutely and unambiguously answers my question. You sound very smart!
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Hey, this is Internet 2.0 now! Sarcasm tags are mandatory.
-- OK, I confess I am pretty sure Internet 2.0 means something else... can't really remember what since my buzzwordometer is broken. Was that JAVA applets on every page? Blogs? Vlogs? Eh, whatever. I am going to choose to believe that it means that sarcasm tags are mandatory for sarcasm and verbal irony now.
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It might come as a shock to you, but any women "injected" by her husband is indistinguishable from a random woman with donated sperm. Magical thinking by people like you is not a prescription for success.
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>"any women "injected" by her husband is indistinguishable from a random woman with donated sperm."
Actually, that isn't quite true. There are subtle processes at work in couples choosing each other in unconscious ways. Some are based on smell, some on visual health cues. Interestingly, they tend to help make sure that they are genetically more "compatible" with each other. I don't know how effective it is, but I do remember reading about it more than once. One was really strange, it had to do with h
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Re: f**k around, find out (Score:2)
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Except of course for all the future generations those children might have gone on to produce without anyone being the wiser. Also that, statistically, the screening done on sperm donors, while it missed this, will produce children with fewer genetic defects on average.
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But then natural selection might have caused some or all of the 1 to 3 offspring to die, thereby not have their own offspring to carrying on the defect.
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It's a question of dying before producing offspring. The article shows that the majority will reach the average age of parenthood in society. That's all it takes.
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They literally didn't fuck. It was a sperm donation.
Re: f**k around, find out (Score:1)
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The nuclear family system has been working since forever, let's instead inject random women with "donated" sperm and see what happens
Even if we ignore the nonsense at the end of your sentence, and ignore questions of whether the nuclear family (which is not actually some dominant traditional norm) is some preferable option, we still have to wonder how you somehow think that sperm donation is antithetical to the nuclear family.
Unfair title (Score:5, Informative)
The title suggests it was the donor's fault. It wasn't. It was the sperm bank that didn't do the necessary checks and the sperm bank that shared his genetic material 200 times. The guy had nothing to do with the result.
Re:Unfair title (Score:5, Insightful)
It was the sperm bank that didn't do the necessary checks
Was the test available at the time? Did other sperm banks check for this mutation?
and the sperm bank that shared his genetic material 200 times.
Way more than that. It was 200 babies, not 200 attempts. The success rate of artificial insemination is about 20%, so that's 1000 squirts.
Re: Unfair title (Score:2)
Always fun playing with these kinds of numbers.
I don't think 200 is a large sample in this context. This one donor could easily have better than a 20% success rate. Maybe he is a super sperminator and got his hits the first time either all of most of the time.
We did AI and got a hit the first try. Maybe I'm a super sperminator too. Will never know, since we tried just the one time.
Re: Unfair title (Score:2)
Super Sperminator - great name for a new Marvel Superhero
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Or a band that opens for GWAR.
Re: Unfair title (Score:2)
Always fun playing with these kinds of numbers.
I don't think 200 is a large sample in whtii
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Re:Unfair title (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Unfair title (Score:3)
Outsourcing to foreign mothers. Typical in the current economic climate.
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It was the sperm bank that didn't do the necessary checks
False. It was the sperm bank didn't do a check they weren't required to do. You can't check for everything all the time. This simply was not something that was scanned for because the mutation was generally known to be very rare.
Re: Unfair title (Score:2)
Checks shouldn't be chosen on likelihood of occurrence alone. They should be also based on impact. Especially if you use someone's genetic material more times than you should have.
perm (Score:5, Funny)
perm from a donor who unknowingly carried a cancer-causing gene has been used to conceive nearly 200 babies across Europe
And their hair is amazing.
Re: perm (Score:5, Insightful)
Was he your daddy? You seem to share a lot in common with cancer.
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and you make a lame joke out of a copy paste editor error we all saw and ignored.
Don't be mad because you didn't see it.
Also, don't call them "editors"
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Good job doubling down when called out on your horrific and stupid "joke"
You seem to have forgotten we have read your comments.
Done here.
Good. Fuck off and don't come back, hypocrite.
Re: perm (Score:2)
Who did the joke harm?
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Medical AIs the world over will soon associate hair length with cancer risk and advertising AIs will offer hair extension coupons to dads paying child support.
Making a bad joke risks serious side affects. Please, don't do it.
I mean... (Score:2)
Why not blame it on his ancestors? It seems like we're dumping a lot of hate on just some random guy...
Re: I mean... (Score:2)
Just blame it on Adam and Eve, everyone's ancestors. Or on whoever made them.
Re: I mean... (Score:2)
Random guy? It's probably the guy who founded the fertility clinic. Or the technician in charge of taking the samples out of storage.
There's no honor among eugenics fans. "Good genes' always means "my genes", otherwise you were sleeping in biology class... There's a whole Wikipedia list page for doctors who pulled this little trick. And that's just the ones who got caught.
more (and better) coverage (Score:3)
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Sure, and the Big Mac diet doesn't cause heart attacks. I get that correlation isn't causation here, but you might be OK with saying that "certain environmental conditions" caused the cancer. But if those don't cause cancer except in conjunction with the mutation it's at least equally valid to say that the mutation "caused" the cancer. Or you can say that nothing causes cancer, and cancer is a natural process that can only be prevented by certain genetic advantages / environmental conditions.
Most of the
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Pharma disinfo notwithstanding, there's no such thing as a cancer-causing gene.
That's a tricky question of etiology. Technically, cancer is normally caused by a an inherited or in vivo genetic mutation which leads to cells multiplying without constraint. That may be a simplification, but it really does seem like it's a pretty valid claim to say that cancer is pretty much always from a cancer-causing gene.
Irresponsible to allow single donor 200+ children (Score:4, Insightful)
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This is the direct result of not banning sperm export. Even in the country where the sperm bank is based it's only legal to use the same donor 12 times.
But ultimately it's another case of big number sounding scary because relative statistics are ignored. Those 200 babies got unlucky but you're far FAR less likely to have a genetic problem with a donor, so having that multiplied by 200 isn't that big a deal. It is estimated that Li Fraumeni syndrome affects on average 1 in 10000 people. That's 400000 people
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Why was it choosen (Score:2)
I get the fact that there was huge malfunction in the system that was supposed to limit each donor to less than 10 people.
I get the fact that there were inadequate/mistakes screenings.
But the real question is what description led it to be chosen over 200 times by the customers?
Hypothesis: Tall, handsome, doctor.
Null hypothesis: Kind, loving, honorable
Anyone willing to bet on the null?
So what? (Score:2)
Would any of "his" children prefer not to live? Rather live with the possibility of getting cancer than not living just to let another person that is less likely to get cancer live.
Real Question (Score:1)
Nature provides firewalls people fail to (Score:2)
When a man and a woman form a family unit and have kids, the old-fashioned natural way, the damage from any person having such genetic issues is very limited; most modern families have very few kids and even older families on rural farms usually had fewer than ten. No husband and wife, no matter how enthusiastic and frisky are gonna have 200 kids.
When people decide that we all live in a brave new world now where the old rules no longer apply and mankind can do ANYTHING and consequences-be-damned, we can end