Events

Registering Concern: Should Anonymous Gamete Donors Be Encouraged to Reregister and If So How?

Progress Educational Trust
Palace of Westminster, London SW1A 0AA, UK
11 June 2009 -

An evening debate at the Houses of Parliament, organised by the Progress Educational Trust (PET) in partnership with the Donor Conception Network and the National Gamete Donation Trust, with the support of Parliamentary sponsors Dr Evan Harris (then Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Oxford West and Abingdon) and Dari Taylor (then Labour Member of Parliament for Stockton South).

The entitlement to anonymity of UK sperm and egg donors ended in 2005, a development that has been welcomed by those who spent long years campaigning for it, and criticised by those who blame it for a current shortage of donor sperm and eggs. Because this change in law applies only prospectively, it remains difficult if not impossible for previous generations of donor-conceived individuals to locate their genetic parents and other genetic relatives. Initiatives such as UK DonorLink and its overseas equivalents have done much to redress this, but the only thoroughgoing solution at present is for anonymity-era donors to elect to join the non-anonymous donor register.

Whether and how to encourage donors to reregister in this way is a difficult question. Some donor-conceived individuals insist that they are entitled to know their genetic provenance, not just for practical reasons of medical history but also to address profound difficulties of psychology and identity. Others counter that revealing the identities of anonymous donors is an unconscionable breach of the terms on which they donated in good faith, and that at the very least, the donor's consent must be a prerequisite for identifying them. But how does one solicit consent from a group of people whose identity is, by definition, unknown?

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Speakers

• Will Calder
  anonymity-era sperm donor

• David Gollancz
  Partner at Field Fisher Waterhouse and donor-conceived individual

• Danielle Hamm
  Policy Manager and Secretary of the Ethics and Law Advisory Committee at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority

• Dr Jennifer Speirs
  Honorary Fellow in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh's School of Social and Political Science

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Chair

• Dr Allan Pacey
  Senior Lecturer in Andrology at the University of Sheffield's Medical School

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Partners and supporters

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• Dr Evan Harris

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• Dari Taylor

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Buy Sperm Banking: Theory and Practice coedited by Allan Pacey from Amazon UK or Amazon USA, and buy The Ethics of Caring for Older People coauthored by Danielle Hamm from Amazon UK or Amazon USA.