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DNA and Online Search Finds Birth Parent
stuyman writes "NewScientist is reporting that anonymous sperm donation is not so anonymous anymore. An enterprising 15 year old tracked down his biological father, an anonymous sperm donor, using an online genealogy service and an online information service."
Uh...
What exactly is wrong with donating to a sperm bank? It allows people to have kids that might otherwise not be able to.
And what exactly is wrong with using the money for beer? Beer is good.
And how exactly could the child become emotionally scarred? By finding out at least one of his genetic parents is not part of his family? Why exactly does that matter? He has (presumably) two parents who love him and wanted him enough to go to extraordinary measures to have him. Isn't that good enough?
And if he didn't know that he was a sperm bank baby, and it does scar him, isn't it the fault of his parents that actually take care of him, for not telling him before he found it out on the internet?
Could you please expound on what, exactly, is wrong with this situation in your view? I can't figure it out beyond the possibility that you want to whine about 'them damn college students!'
I've come for the woman, and your head.
You know, and I'm only speaking for myself here, if my biological offspring were with it enough to do this by themselve(s) then I would actually love to hear from them and see where it went from there. Seriously, the best complement a child can pay to a parent is being exceptionally competent within the age they live in. This kid is definately an Information Age personality. Cool kid.
Shh.
You make it sound like someone went out and got someone pregnant for beer money. You don't actually fuck someone at a sperm bank. There's plenty of horrible parents in the worldI think people donating to sperm banks are somewhere at the end of the list of parenting problems.
How can someone donating to a sperm bank ever give his offspring a second thought? He never knows if or when or how many kids will be the result of that donation. At most he could perhaps claim to have been thinking about the potential parents and their plight of not being able to have children.
These kids aren't adopted. These people aren't selling babies for beer money. They're selling people the opportunity to have 'their own' children, merely with someone else's genetic material. These kids weren't abandoned by some 'original' parents. Their parents are the people who went to the sperm bank, and got pregnant, and so on, specifically because they wanted a child. These children are living with their real parents. The fact that the semen came from some other guy's penis, whatever the motivation, seems like an infinitesimal part of the equation, unless you're worried about genetic diseases or something.
I've come for the woman, and your head.
Rare case my a$$. The adoption discussion, like so many of other discussions today, has been hijacked by the whiners.
Of the 7 people I know who were adopted (self, sibling, one highschool friend, two college friends, two coworkers), exactly 0 of us care to find our genetic donors. But because we don't care, we're not the ones out there bitching and moaning and demanding pity (and airtime) from those who write headlines.
And speaking as a female, the existence of said whining class is a hell of an incentive for me to prefer abortion to adoption as a solution on the off chance I get pregnant before I get around to getting myself spayed. The thought of having some person who feels that there's this void inside them that only I can fill track me down 18 years after I made a mistake, and start stalking me on the grounds that we're biologically related and therefore I must care, really, truly, deep down, I'm just in denial but if they try hard enough I'll realize the TRUTH (I've actually seen this happen to a friend of mine's mother), is just more unpleasantness than I really want to deal with, ever.
Maybe I'm a cold blooded bitch, but I think it's more likely that I'm a well-grounded, stable individual who realizes that the past is the past, and I make my future (thanks mom and dad, you did a good job), and the whiners just need to grown the fsck up already.
I think there is a lot of value in knowing who your genetic ancestors are. For example my father has an uncommon genetic condition whereby he has poor speculation to his extremity's. But having lived like this most of his life he put little thought into keeping his extremity's worm and got a case of frost bite by working on his car for a few hours in the cold when not useing good foot protection. It then took him several years of somewhat ext ream pain and the removial of some toes to heal. Now knowing about this I have reason to be more cautious when it does not seem all that could out.
However, before this happened to him I used to walk around all winter in sandals because my feet never felt cold. I understand that while I don't feel cold my feet are vary cold when I do this so I can do a lot of damage by walking around like this even if it seems like everything is fine. Thus, by knowing about possible genetic issues you are better able to deal with them.
It's the same thing with hart conditions / diabetes ect. On a more personal level knowing you family's history for breast caner is a powerful tool which would help you manage risk. But, I agree with you that knowing you genetic ancestors as specific people is probably not all that important.