In the UK sperm or eggs from a single donor can be used to create no more than 10 families - this is referred to as the 10-family limit. However, sperm donated in UK may be exported and can be used to create large numbers of children lots of different countries. This issue was brought to public attention at the PET event 10 Families & Counting: Time for Global Limits on Donor-Created (Half) Siblings?. Hannah Devlin picked up on this issue two articles in the Guardian.
The first article quoted Professor Jackson Kirkman-Brown who spoke at the PET event. Professor Kirkman-Brown who is chair of the Association for Reproductive and Clinical Scientists, called for tighter restrictions on the use of sperm donations to avoid hundreds of children being created by the same donor.
PET Director Sarah Norcross was also quoted.
She said: 'I’m not against there being more than 10 families if some are outside the UK, but 75, which some of these banks have alighted on, is a heck of a lot of relatives. Even if the HFEA say we can’t control the number of families abroad, they could insist that the number is made available to the recipient.”'
The second article featured personal perspectives about the 10-family limit being exceeded outside the UK. Grace Halden and Kevin Moore, who both spoke at the PET event, shared the views of the parent, the donor-conceived and the donor.
