Britain faces sperm shortage, calls for donors

LONDON - Britain is facing a sperm donor shortage after reversing confidentiality laws and limiting the number of women who can use sperm from one donor, fertility experts warned Wednesday.

Britain in 2005 changed the law protecting anonymous sperm donors and allowed children to learn the identity of donor fathers

So… I suppose sending them a care package is out?

I do understand the problem with anonymity because of the outside chance that after becoming adults two people who had the same father could unknowingly engage in successful sex, and have children. 

However, it does seem that this might also become a moot event if DNA was routinely gathered at birth and part of the process of at least marriage in much the way that blood tests were at one time part of being issued a marriage license (I can see it becoming typical perhaps in the future by way of an implanted chip with such pertinent information).

I don’t understand why they can’t just give the children medical records with a pseudonym or code representing their father. That way the donor is still anonymous and there’s not issue of the children meeting and having sex without knowing they have the same father.

Not that two people with the same father but different mothers having children together is exactly the end of the world, either.  Unless there are some incredible levels of the exact same recessive genetic diseases lurking in all three of the original parents’ DNA, it’s not going to result in demon babies with eight arms and three eyes or anything like that.  It’s just one generation of halfway inbreeding that we’re looking at here.  Oh, the horror.