Is it ethical to bring a human being into the world who is deliberately cut off from their ancestry, family medical history, and close genetic relatives? Nowhere on the planet, or at any time in history has it been medically or psychologically accepted practice to keep a person from their close genetic relatives for the first 18 years of life or forever.
Is it ethical to run an industry that helps to create human life, yet has little to no accurate record-keeping, oversight, or regulation?
Is it ethical to always put the rights of parents (to have a child), donors (to remain anonymous), and the industry (to make money) ahead of the rights of donor-conceived people?
Is it ethical to sell all gametes as anonymous: for 18 years or forever?
Is it ethical for an industry that’s helping to create human life to have little to no accurate record keeping on the children being born?
Is it ethical to promise donors that there are limits (eg., 10 or 20 offspring or families) that could be created from their gametes? You can’t promise limits until you have accurate records. With voluntary birth reporting, there won’t ever be accurate records and/or limits.
Is it ethical to create half-sibling groups of more than 25, 50, 100, or 200?
Is it ethical for gamete vendors to withhold from donors (and parents/DCP) how many children they have on record?
Is it ethical for a sperm bank to continue selling the sperm of a donor they claim they’ve stopped selling?
Is it ethical to keep the truth about one’s donor origins from a donor-conceived person (DCP)?
Is it ethical for an industry that’s helping to create human life to have little to no accurate record-keeping on updated medical information of donors and children?
Is it ethical to deliberately keep reported medical information from being shared between donor family members?
Is it ethical for gamete vendors to claim that they conduct yearly medical updates on donors when they don’t actually do so?
Is it ethical for a gamete vendor to be dismissive when a donor tries to report a medical issue that families should know about?
Is it ethical for gamete vendors to continue selling gametes after receiving reports of genetic medical issues?
Is it ethical for gamete vendors to continue selling the sperm of a deceased donor without disclosing that fact? In 2023 there was another reported case of sperm still for sale by a donor who passed away 7 years ago.
Is it ethical for a gamete vendor to not disclose to offspring the medical cause of a donor’s death?
Is it ethical for a gamete vendor to not disclose to prospective parents when medical issues have been reported from families with children from a particular donor?
Is it ethical for gamete vendors to remove important medical information from a donor’s profile?
Is it ethical to not adequately counsel or educate prospective parents/donors so that they can make fully informed decisions?
Is it ethical for gamete vendors to be non-responsive or lie to donor-conceived adults with “open” or “willing to be known” donors, thereby not facilitating promised contact?
Is it ethical for gamete vendors to claim that “open” donors can’t be found or that they changed their minds when that isn’t the truth?
Is it ethical for doctors/clinics/gamete vendors to only release donor information to the “patient” (the parent) and not to the donor-conceived person?
Is it ethical to keep “anonymous” donors and DCP from each other when they both agree on mutual consent contact?
Is it ethical to keep biological grandparents from their donor grandchildren?
Is it ethical for gamete vendors to include in their contracts the prohibition of (and then threaten with $10k or $20k fines) parents/donors connecting with each other via DNA sites or via the Donor Sibling Registry?
Is it ethical to sell a donor’s gametes for 10, 20, or 25 years?
Is it ethical for local clinics to not advise recipient parents of the originating sperm bank/facility/donor number/ID?
Is it ethical for gamete vendors/doctors/clinics to claim that parent/donor records were destroyed (so many floods and fires...) when that is not the truth?
Is it ethical for a donor to lie about medical, physical, criminal, or academic information on their profile?
Is it ethical for a gamete vendor to change more minor things, like a donor’s height by 2”, 4”, or 6” on the donor’s profile?
Is it ethical to entice young men and women with large sums of money to sell their gametes, with no adequate counseling or education about how selling their gametes may affect them and their families for many decades to come?
Is it ethical to place donor-conceived people in situations where they are unknowingly interacting with half-siblings?
Is it ethical to not adequately advise prospective egg donors about the potential health risks involved? (OHSS, secondary infertility, cancer, etc.). “No known risks” isn’t the same as “no risks”.
Is it ethical to repeatedly hyperstimulate egg donors to retrieve an unsafe number of eggs?
Is it ethical to donate gametes to more than one facility? Five facilities? Ten or more facilities?
Is it ethical to give a parent a different donor than the one they chose and thought they used to have their child?
Is it ethical for doctors and clinics to recommend sperm banks that they know are unethical?
[Note: none of these are hypothetical.]