Confessions of a Cryo-Kid: "The reality of reunion...and what the media doesn't tell you"

http://cryokidconfessions.blogspot.com/2010/03/reality-of-reunionand-wha...

Saturday, March 6, 2010
The reality of reunion...and what the media doesn't tell you

"Last week an article ran in Slate Magazine entitled "Are Sperm Donors Really Anonymous Anymore?" (never mind the gross number of factual errors throughout the entire article).

While I liked that they ran a story about this, it is yet another slap in the face to many adult offspring who are trying to find their roots. The story focuses on a DI mommy that wanted to find the donor/biological father of her child for whatever medical/emotional reason she (the mom) may have. Let me reiterate that. It is not the offspring searching!! So the DI mommy uses the DNA from one of her daughters' many half siblings to do genetic genealogy, and based on the large amount of "non-identifying" information provided by the donor, tracks him down and contacts him out of the blue on the phone!!!

While I believe that adult offspring should have every right guaranteed to them to find their missing kin, and I believe that anonymous donors are unethical....it is foolish behaviors as mentioned above that could potentially ruin it for a great many offspring in the future. Cryos, the largest sperm bank in the world, based in Denmark, is now trying to stop offspring from finding one another by abolishing the donor number and replacing it with a "fingerprint" that identifies the donor to Cryos but cannot be traced and compared among his many offspring. This is in direct result of instances such as with donor 3066, who was found by a mother and put in the difficult and inevitably disastrous situation of being confronted with 13 small donor conceived offspring and their mommies all vying for his attention.

For example, the mom who traced him down using another child's DNA stated this:

"I e-mailed the group when I found him and said I thought you would want to know," she said. "Once they found out, everyone wanted to know who he was, and now he knows about all the kids. I talk to him a few times a year, but I'm the only mom who he's agreed to talk to, and we're the only family he's met."

Now we have 12 other mommies who are mad, and 12+ other children who will likely never get the opportunity to meet their biological father because of a selfish impulse made by one mother. Who suffers in the end, but the other 12+ children. And the worst part is, the young boy who's DNA was used to trace this man in the first place will likely never get the chance to meet his biological father, that hehelped this other mommy and one of his half-siblings steal the show.

So that brings to light the next aspect of reunion I wanted to touch upon. The media and its effect on the concept of reunion."

Read (MUCH MORE) of this blog post here:
http://cryokidconfessions.blogspot.com/2010/03/reality-of-reunionand-wha...