Ten children conceived using the sperm of a single donor in Europe have been diagnosed with cancer.
This development has sparked urgent calls for tighter fertility regulations and international limits on donor usage, reports CNN.
Between 2008 and 2015, sperm from one man was used to conceive 67 children from 46 families across eight European countries: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
Edwige Kasper, a biologist at Rouen University Hospital in France, revealed the findings at the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics in Milan.
She said, “At the heart of the problem seems to lie the regulation, or maybe the lack of regulation, of the number of births by a single donor.”
Though the donor is healthy, he carries a rare mutation in the TP53 gene linked to Li-Fraumeni syndrome—a disorder that greatly increases the risk of cancer.
So far, ten of the children have developed cancers such as brain tumors and Hodgkin lymphoma.
Thirteen more carry the mutation but haven’t shown signs of cancer yet.
Kasper said, “These children will need regular check-ups. They have a 50% chance of passing the gene on to their own children.”
She explained the ongoing monitoring protocol: “The follow-up protocol involves whole-body MRI scans, MRI scans of the brain and, for adults, of the breast, ultrasound examination of the abdomen, and a clinical examination by a specialist.
“This is heavy and stressful for carriers, but we have seen its effectiveness in that it has enabled early detection of tumours and thus improved patients’ chances of survival.”
Unlike serial donors in other scandals, this man donated sperm only to one private facility: the European Sperm Bank in Denmark.
Julie Paulli Budtz, vice-president of corporate communications at the bank, said, “The donor has been thoroughly tested even above the required standards, but preventative genetic screening is reaching its limits here.
“Every human being has about 20,000 genes, and it is scientifically simply not possible to detect disease-causing mutations in a person’s gene pool if you don’t know what you are looking for.”
Currently, there is no unified limit across Europe on how many children can be conceived from a single donor.
National rules vary — France limits donors to 10 births, Denmark to 12, and Germany to 15.
Budtz said the European Sperm Bank now follows its own voluntary international cap of 75 families per donor, but emphasized that regulation must improve across borders.
Kasper added, “There is a major issue here concerning a lack of harmonised regulation across Europe.
“We need proper regulation at European level to try to prevent it happening again, and to implement measures to ensure a worldwide limit on the number of offspring conceived from the same donor.”
