Mom sues, saying prolific sperm donor passed along autism

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24 Sep 2019, 2:21 am

@SharonB

There are some wonderful positive people who choose to adopt/bring up a child with special needs. I have nothing but praise for parents who make this decision (although many are a little underprepared).

However for the vast majority choosing to obtain an egg/sperm donor are very particular they don't want a child with mental health complications.

I have posted before that > 90% of parents who do an amniocentesis and have the option to terminate a downs syndrome fetus choose to terminate. That gives some indication why the mother of the sperm donor is willing to pursue litigation against this man/sperm bank because there is some sense of medical security i.e. the IVF specialists screen the sperm and check for motility health etc but they can't screen for undiagnosed genetic risk.

Antrax
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24 Sep 2019, 10:41 am

cyberdad wrote:

Antrax wrote:

They're both responsible. The donor for lying, the sperm bank for not vetting.

I think the woman's attorney's would need to demonstrate that the sperm bank did not do due diligence but I think the problem here would impact on any sperm bank if the standard donor proforma does not require anything other than self-report from the donor.

This is the can of worms I spoke of a few years ago with sperm (or even egg) donors. A couple of years ago there was an Aspie dude on WP who was going to register as a sperm donor because he wanted to spread his "intelligence" genes (and I really hope this isn't him in this story). I warned him that if he doesn't disclose his diagnosis that it would be a criminal act.

I recall being the only person with concerns as others (inluding DW-A Mom) thought it was his civil right to donate sperm as somehow Aspergers was some type of gift??

Unfortunately it looks like my concerns have come true.

My final point is the current donor (whoever he is) could be unaware he is an Aspie and therefore I can't see how he is culpable. It's not like they can do mandatory genetic screening; we know that will reveal nothing.

And my point is that regardless of whether the donor know about autism or not, he lied about his education and mental health history.

So little is known about the genetics of autism, it's possible the man doesn't even have clinical autism just the genetics that predisposes his children.

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24 Sep 2019, 5:35 pm

Shocking designer baby failed.
Whole system disgusts me.

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SharonB
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24 Sep 2019, 8:34 pm

cyberdad wrote:

However for the vast majority choosing to obtain an egg/sperm donor are very particular they don't want a child with mental health complications.

Well, I guess I am here on WP b/c I am clearly not representative of the vast majority. :wink:

That just doesn't make sense to me: to me, the concern would be the severity of the physical or mental illness. One is not inherently better or worse than the other (considering mind and body are interrelated anyways). Teasing: Clearly this vast majority has poor Theory of Mind and can't think the way I do.

cyberdad
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26 Sep 2019, 10:49 am

The crucial statement that is noteworthy;

She says in the complaint that research, based on public documents and calls to his relatives, showed that the donor had no college degrees, had been diagnosed with ADHD, and "went to a school for children with learning and emotional disabilities." (Idant, and other sperm banks, generally do not verify their donors' medical and educational backgrounds.)

While this doesn't suggest he could have known about his risk of siring children with autism, it does suggest he lied on his proforma on two areas the sperm banks are not resourced to check - namely mental health and academic records. I would have thought the latter would be easy to verify, especially if donor recipients are looking for tertiary educated donors.

Wolfram87
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27 Sep 2019, 1:53 am

Wasn't there a member here who bragged about donating sperm without disclosing his diagnosis (or might have been undiagnosed) seemingly mostly out of spite?

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cyberdad
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28 Sep 2019, 5:32 am

Wolfram87 wrote:

Wasn't there a member here who bragged about donating sperm without disclosing his diagnosis (or might have been undiagnosed) seemingly mostly out of spite?

That's the dude I've been referring to

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29 Sep 2019, 3:30 pm

cyberdad wrote:

Weird, almost like someone posted this on the first page.

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29 Sep 2019, 7:10 pm

Antrax wrote:

cyberdad wrote:

Weird, almost like someone posted this on the first page.

In my part of the world it's called cutting to the chase...

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29 Sep 2019, 8:36 pm

cyberdad wrote:

Antrax wrote:

cyberdad wrote:

Weird, almost like someone posted this on the first page.

In my part of the world it's called cutting to the chase...

I was referring to my post:

Antrax wrote:

Critical passage.

Quote:

She says in the complaint that research, based on public documents and calls to his relatives, showed that the donor had no college degrees, had been diagnosed with ADHD, and "went to a school for children with learning and emotional disabilities." (Idant, and other sperm banks, generally do not verify their donors' medical and educational backgrounds.) Moreover, her attorneys wrote in the filing, "Donor H898 is a prolific sperm donor who has fathered at least 12 children through sperm donation, and that each of those children has either been diagnosed with Autism, or suffers from signs and symptoms associated with Autism." In court documents, other mothers corroborated the story.

If accurate then the donor is fraudulent, autism diagnosis or no autism diagnosis.

To which you responded by asking if anyone was at fault. You then made a nearly identical post later. This sequence of posts struck me as strange occurrence and worthy of comment.

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cyberdad
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29 Sep 2019, 9:03 pm

Might be I lost track...thanks for the clarification

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30 Sep 2019, 8:50 am

If the dude knowingly lied on his paperwork, he's gonna be in the crosshairs for this.

The question then is: should the organization handling the samples be responsible for checking out everything that a donor states? I mean, yes, obviously they do have genetic samples to hand to run screening on, but for things where there aren't accepted genetic tests yet, or things which aren't genetic at all (like his educational qualifications), is the company liable if it presents the donor's statements as true (which it has a financial incentive to do if they're exaggerated)? Considering that the recipient isn't going to be able to do a lot of their own homework on the (anonymous) donor, they're not going to be able to verify the claims themselves.

And... one way or another, those claims are going to affect a lot of people's lives for a very long time. There really does need to be some kind of insurance in place which doesn't need the recipient to start suing everyone. Maybe the organization should be running those kinds of checks, if it's going to be the one having to take out the insurance (given that the donors are not guaranteed to be easily located after the event or financially capable of meeting a child's requirements).

It's not even necessarily strictly an autism thing; this could apply for any number of conditions.

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30 Sep 2019, 8:59 am

If the donor truly is disabled due to his mental state, then how much of a settlement will the plaintiff(s) receive?

cyberdad
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30 Sep 2019, 9:08 am

Dial1194 wrote:

things which aren't genetic at all (like his educational qualifications), is the company liable if it presents the donor's statements as true (which it has a financial incentive to do if they're exaggerated)? Considering that the recipient isn't going to be able to do a lot of their own homework on the (anonymous) donor, they're not going to be able to verify the claims themselves.

I think organisations are capable of checking qualifications and I would have thought all sperm banks should be doing this for their client's benefits. There must, however, be some type of contractual clause that protects the sperm bank from responsibility if the donor has lied about their paper qualification as this is clearly self-report.

Dial1194 wrote:

if it's going to be the one having to take out the insurance (given that the donors are not guaranteed to be easily located after the event or financially capable of meeting a child's requirements).

Medical insurance already covers artificial insemination. On the other hand insurance cover against false claims on a donor's profile is non-existent and I doubt anyone will be willing to cover claims over something that's so hard to chase down.

Dial1194 wrote:

It's not even necessarily strictly an autism thing; this could apply for any number of conditions.

Yes we already said this, this applies to any inherited condition where the sperm bank is reliant on the donor disclosing personal information.

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