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After discovering he has at least 17 kids, man sues fertility clinic
- dopamean 7y agoI dont understand why he cares? Also how could a clinic guarantee a specific number? Don't they normally implant (wrong word?) more embryos since they don't all take and that's how people sometimes end up with twins or triplets?
- Circuits 7y agoWell I think it's obvious why he cares... his children are trying to reach him. As for guaranteeing a specific number of children, no I don't believe they would be able to do that. However, I think the problem is not that they can not guarantee a specific number of children. The problem is that they guaranteed a specific number of woman who would be impregnated with his sperm but have gone well beyond the number they gave him.
- umeshunni 7y agoWait till the mothers of the 17 kids start asking for child support or the kids ask for a share of his inheritance. Current laws don't require either of these, but all it takes is a single opinionated judge to set a precedent in this matter.
- Donald 7y agoIf you watch his press conference, he seems to be taking a public health angle. He has three sons within his marriage in the same region as his 17 in vitro children. There's increased risk of inbreeding between these 20 people who (unknowingly to one another) share significant genetic material. https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2019/10/oregon-doctor-says-his-donated-sperm-was-used-to-father-at-least-17-children-sues-ohsu-for-525-million.html https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2019/10/oregon-doctor-says-h...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- SkyBelow 7y agoIs that really a health concern though? Single generation shouldn't have risks higher than some already at risk people have no matter who they partner with.
- reitanqild 7y agoWhat I've learned is that there's significant risk even for cousins who have children together, so even more for half siblings.
- pgeorgi 7y ago... if the cousins' parents and grandparents are similarly closely related to each other, yes. Otherwise probably not.
- jacobolus 7y agoMy understanding is that 1 generation of first-cousin marriage is very low risk. The problem comes when you have many generations of family marriages in a row. The Catholic church tried to make cousin marriages taboo as a way to break up clans and solidify church power.
- blueblimp 7y agoYou're right. It's weird that people are rushing in here to defend inbreeding. What people might not realize is even when there's not a specific disease caused by the inbreeding, there is still an overall negative effect on health, "inbreeding depression". Here is a paper that estimates the effect in humans: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26131930 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26131930.
- blueblimp 7y agoAnything first cousin or closer is bad. Second cousin is kinda bad. Third cousin is OK if it's not happening all the time.
- ackshually 7y agoBreach of contract on location and number increases the possibility of accidental inbreeding for his children and those children concieved with his sperm without his knowledge. Very possible if those children go to the same school etc.
- filoleg 7y agoYep, your guess was exactly on point, as the article mentions. >Some go to the same school as the kids he has with his wife.
- TomVDB 7y agoOne of the reasons he cares is because of the chance of incest. Some of his kids went to the same schools and churches.
- onion2k 7y agoI dont understand why he cares? Two of the children contacted him first. That might have been just them innocuously looking for their biological parent, or it might have been a demand for parental support. If it's the latter then having 17 or more children potentially making a demand on him would make a big difference to his life. Also how could a clinic guarantee a specific number? They could count the number of successful children born with sperm from a donor and stop using that donation once there are 5 children.
- benatkin 7y agoIt seems like he feels responsible for the ones he's met. They're no longer strangers. What would it be like for them to fall on hard times? He might be feeling the need to help them proactively, perhaps by putting them through college, and this is something he might need money from the lawsuit in order to do.
- dopamean 7y agoThat all makes sense but I still don't think guaranteeing a specific number is possible. Say they had 4 successful births an are going for a 5th to reach the limit. We'll they'll implant more than 1 because that's how IVF works and so more than 5 could be born. I definitely get that 17 means they just ignored his wish entirely. I was just trying to point out that guaranteeing a specific number doesn't seem like a reasonable/possible thing to do.
- silencio 7y agothe limit is typically measured in families, and within those families we’re usually not talking a dozen children each. a sperm bank that limits to 10 families per donor will probably end up in the ballpark of 10-20 children. (10 families is a very conservative limit - most banks go higher.) there can be a mad scramble to buy “sibling” vials from an otherwise retired donor if a family decides that they are done with extra vials. ivf nowadays is also very much more strict about what you transfer. i did ivf a few months ago and we only transferred one PGS tested, day 5 embryo because a second one was not going to do anything good for me or the pregnancy odds. 2-3 decades ago both the tech and the feelings around donor identities and limits were very different. but nowadays we’re moving towards smaller limits and open identity of some sort, while fewer donor gametes are necessary for people to get pregnant. it’s curious.
- daveFNbuck 7y agoThe fertility clinic told him the kids would all be out-of-state. Some of the kids live near him and go to the same school and church as his kids. People who don't know they're siblings shouldn't live close enough to each other to become romantically involved.
- apta 7y ago> The fertility clinic told him the kids would all be out-of-state. As if this excuses this sort of behavior.
- taco_emoji 7y agoWhat sort of behavior?
- apta 7y agoDonating sperm such that anyone can come and use it to impregnate herself. The biological father doesn't know who his offspring are, they are not assigned to him in paperwork, resulting in potential inbreeding down the line. Not to mention that many of said offspring have an innate desire to find out who their real father is, meaning it has a psychological affect on them. This behavior is extremely selfish from both sides, the sperm donor (getting money in return), and the recipient. Who ends up suffering as a result of this are the offspring produced, and potentially society as a whole down the line as we will have yet another psychological issue to deal with, and other things we don't know about so far.
- amanaplanacanal 7y agoWell, some percentage of kids have fathers other than the ones they are aware of, since long before IVF was a thing. That's just life. Unless you and your potential mate get tested, you could always be half siblings. You have no way to know.
- pessimizer 7y agoThis isn't just life, it's a business that failed to live up to its contract.
- GavinMcG 7y agoDo you not care when your expectations are breached? The objection that the clinic couldn't actually guarantee a specific number of children doesn't hold water since they could have stopped using his sperm once the 5th child was born.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- abhorrence 7y agoClinics are often only involved in the “getting pregnant” stage. They rely on reports of live birth to determine when they should stop using a particular donor.
- Spooky23 7y agoIt sounds like there were conditions (don't use it in this region, no more than 5 kids, etc) that weren't met. For IVF, the best practice is to implant 3-4 embryos, sometimes less when the woman doesn't have fertility issues. Obviously circumstances vary and IVF results in more multiples, but you're not going to get 5 sets of triplets if the clinic is doing what they agreed to do.
- meristem 7y agoThe number of live births (rate of success) has increased; even with older mothers there is a push for 1 or two implanted embryos at a time.
- silencio 7y agocurrent best practice is no longer that high unless you have very low quality early embryos and the eggs are from someone that is 38+ years old. even 3 can be pushing it. i had genetically tested day 5 blastocysts with my last cycle and most fertility doctors will not dare transfer more than one of those at a time regardless of age. but that is the best quality to transfer nowadays. nobody wants to optimize for multiples any more since the rate of issues for both the embryos and the gestational parent are pretty high.
- mmjaa 7y agoWhy should he care? Because there is clearly a lack of regulation over the sperm-donor industry. It is extremely dangerous for men to make these deposits. A friend of mine made a deposit in a sperm donor bank prior to getting a vasectomy. Two years later, he met a woman, who he dated for a few weeks before breaking it off. 9 months later, he was presented with child support demands from the state. She had stalked him, determined he had made a deposit in the sperm bank, then specifically chosen his profile to get pregnant. He is now liable for child support, whether he likes it or not, for the rest of his life (California, in case its of importance). They didn't have sex - she stalked him, got artificially inseminated, and then went to the state to extract money from him. He now has a kid he never wanted, and is resigned to being a father to the child, even though he never planned it and it was forced upon him by a criminal stalker. This highlights just how dangerous it is for men to use these services. Clearly, more regulation and oversight is required - especially if sperm banks are making their own decisions about how their resources are applied.
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y agoThere will be records for the vasectomy and the insemination that could be subpoena'd by a court, no?
- lalaland1125 7y agoEither your friend was lying or he should get a better lawyer. The relevant law in California states that sperm donors are not legal parents: “The donor of semen provided to a licensed physician and surgeon or to a licensed sperm bank for use in assisted reproduction of a woman other than the donor’s spouse is treated in law as if he were not the natural parent of a child thereby conceived, unless otherwise agreed to in a writing signed by the donor and the woman prior to the conception of the child,” states California Family Code 7613.
- silencio 7y agoagreed. time to talk to a lawyer. also maybe the sperm bank, as it’s not trivial at most of them to discover who the donor is to that degree. certainly makes me raise an eyebrow that the timing was so perfect too. i have a further thought - i am a legal owner of an “intimate partner” storage account where my partner’s sperm is stored for only my use as their spouse. even with the very very low FDA testing/paperwork bar for this type of account, there’s a paper trail that can be followed and a chain of custody for every single vial ever used. they’ll have even more documentation if the friend’s sperm was ever for sale.
- SamBam 7y ago> Also how could a clinic guarantee a specific number? Either they shouldn't have guaranteed this, and made it clear that they couldn't, or they should have abided by the agreement. Either way, the clinic is at fault.
- quanticle 7y agoIt's a breach of contract, plain and simple. If he had a written agreement that his sperm would be used to father 5 children and no more, and the clinic violated that, then he is entirely within his rights to sue the clinic for reneging on its half of the deal. As for guaranteeing a specific number, first, if they couldn't guarantee that, why would they agree to the limit in the first place? And even if the guarantee was violated without intent, I would expect perhaps 6 or 7 children... not 17.
- akerro 7y ago>alleges that the OHSU clinic used his 1989 sperm donation to father at least 17 children—some who live in his area—despite him making an agreement with the clinic at the time that his sperm would be used for no more than five children, all born to women living out of the state. >Some go to the same school as the kids he has with his wife. That's so awkward and uncomfortable for me to even think about it, being in this situation...
- fulvous 7y agoDoes it matter why? If they agreed to it and then broke that agreement that is a problem.
- scvsafewfdsvf 7y agoby the birthday paradox the odds of incest are quite high Let's assume his 17 kids (k) are locals. Let's say he lives in a city with 1 million people. That's 500000 potential other sex mates (assuming hetero) We're only interested in people more less our age, about 20% of the population (actually much smaller), so 100 000 = N Chance of incest = 1 - p where p = N!/(N^k (N-k)!) Using the sterling's approximation, and that half his kids are opposite gender, k -> k / 2 = 6.5 About 2 in 10 000 chance of incest. Which are really high for something many people consider worse than death. Now, my assumption of 20% is too generous. What if it's 10%, and he has more, undiscovered kids (presumably who haven't gotten tested)? Let's say 30 kids (it's happened) 1 in 2 thousand for every mate. You wouldn't get into a car that had those odds of a fatal accident, never mind 6, 10, 30 times.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y agoThe article says he found all these kids through Ancestry.com. Surely there must be many, many more whose DNA isn't in that database, no?
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoIt also highlights (once more) how scary Ancestry.com is.
- inetknght 7y agoIn what way is this scary?
- uptown 7y agoMaybe you think it'd be fun to plug your info into Ancestry.com and see what they've got. You've got a decent life, you're living on a fixed income, but you're able to manage just fine. But you ping Ancestry, and they find you've got a gigantic family tree of relatives who you never knew about. Maybe you don't have any interest in meeting these people, but Ancestry.com sure sees some value in those connections. Maybe they strike a deal with an insurance data broker, and now this broker knows about your relatives as-well. Maybe you've got a genetic history of heart disease, a rare form of cancer, or some other medical condition which leaves you predisposed to being a high-risk candidate for some expensive medical bills in the next few years. So your insurance carrier drops you, or raises those rates to an exorbitant rate that you, on your fixed income, can no longer support. So you drop your coverage, but you get sick. Now you've got some enormous medical bills you can no longer pay for, and a rent bill you're delinquent on as-well. You're unable to get new medical coverage, because the pre-existing conditions laws have since lapsed, and all the major insurance carriers subscribe to the same data that that data-broker provided anyway, so you're likely to find similar insurance prices no matter where you go. So now you've got a medical condition you can't pay for, an apartment that's about to kick you to the curb, and few options to pay for either health or home. But hey -- cool family tree!
- 7y ago
- quaquaqua1 7y agoI was conceived in this manner and I only found out thanks to Ancestry DNA. There's at least 20 of us out there who are in contact with each other. It's really cool to have so many siblings, and I am very happy to be alive. It is said to think that my biological father is probably dead. He was apparently a Vietnam vet who needed some extra money. I'm glad he did what he did.
- pravda 7y agoYour half-siblings, do they look like you?
- quaquaqua1 7y agoWe all look like carbon copies of each other, it's incredible. Auburn hair, a ridge on the tip of our nose, thin eyebrows, olive skin. Regardless of our different mothers, it is unmistakeable that we are siblings. Really cool stuff!
- buboard 7y agosounds awesome, you should dna-test everyone that looks like you
- 3JPLW 7y agoIf you've not seen this NYT Magazine feature, you'll probably enjoy it thoroughly: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/magazine/sperm-donor-siblings.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/magazine/sper...
- quaquaqua1 7y agoI will check it out, thanks!!
- backpropaganda 7y agoWhat do you think about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_sexual_attraction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_sexual_attraction ? Did you notice that you were particularly attracted to any of your half-siblings?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- intopieces 7y agoThe connection I’m having trouble making is why having 12 extra kids means he should get $5m. Does he owe child support or something?
- thaumasiotes 7y agoI think the logic is that he could really use $5m.
- xenonite 7y agoMaybe he already spent $5m on wedding preparations for his offspring while it turns out that the spouse has the same biological father.
- ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y agoIn the US, damages in a lawsuit are not always determined by direct, measurable economic costs. Sometimes damages are punitive, to discourage future malfeasance. Sometimes they are contractual. Sometimes they reflect pain and suffering, or risks whose true value is hard to measure.
- e2le 7y agoPerhaps to punish the clinic for not fulfilling their contract to the donor? It's a pretty egregious failure on their part. I doubt 5m is going to sink the clinic.
- bootloop 7y agoWell, he should get at least $96.
- magic_beans 7y agoIt's punitive or to compensate for the donor's emotional toll. For an empathetic person, finding out you have 12 extra kids is incredibly taxing. There's guilt for not having raised them (irrational though it mightbe), shame for not knowing them, fear for their futures, etc etc. I wouldn't wish the situation on anyone.
- trhway 7y ago
- xenonite 7y agoWhat if you go on a date with someone who turns out to have the same biological father?
- dahdum 7y agoSo far all we have his word that he was assured it would be a limit of 5 people and out of state. There’s no signed contract that he’s produced, and doesn’t remember how many times he donated. It was decades ago, he could easily be misremembering someone saying the “average” donor is used 5 times. It wouldn’t make sense for a standard contract to include those limits either. I’m interested where this goes. I’m guessing he’s trying public pressure to force a settlement, knowing he’d lose in trial. Also, if it wasn’t a cash grab, I think he’d have already committed to giving any settlement to those children.
- teej 7y agoDo you keep your contracts from 30 years ago?
- benj111 7y agoWhat's the situation with anonymity? If I left a donation, I wouldn't want a knock on the door 18 years later, let alone 15 knocks.
- bradlys 7y agoI find it interesting that people can even find this information out. It seems he found out from putting his DNA in but I hear other states allow that information to be accessed almost freely. It does make sense from a public health perspective (if everyone started using this service a lot in small communities). If this guy didn't put his agreement in writing then I don't know if there's anything he can really get out of it. Wouldn't it just be he-said/she-said? I didn't see any mention of a written contract. Somewhat related: I was conceived in Germany in 1989. It's really unlikely that I'll ever find out any information about my biological father. Clinics there (until recently) only had to hold some info for 10 years. I don't think my parents even knew anything about the person - as when I came out... I looked nothing like my parents and I don't think they intended that. Brown eyes to their blue. Every facial feature completely different. Olive skin to their paleness. And this extended to the entire family - I always looked out of place. They didn't tell me until I was about 24. I wasn't shocked - clearly. I've never done any DNA testing mostly because no one can place my race and I like the mystery! Sadly - I'm the perfect mix where most white people treat me like I'm brown and most brown people treat me like I'm white. Never got to fit in - lol. I still have a genuine curiosity but not knowing is all the more interesting. Your experience of race is mostly what people think you are anyway.
- tbyehl 7y ago> no one can place my race and I like the mystery! I had a friend in Germany who had dark hair, dark eyes, and a complexion that always made it appear as if he had a real nice tan. His family and the people of the small community he originally came from were all similar as far back as anyone could trace. Likely some inter-mixing or resettling of tribes a thousand or more years ago. They're as Bavarian / European as just about anyone, and probably you are, too.
- bradlys 7y agoDo you have any idea where these people are or names associated with them? I am very intrigued!
- 7y ago