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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."
This would be quite creepy if the (father) had never actually formally donated sperm. (ie. someone has picked up a condom or tissue, and impregnated themselves with the sperm.)
..an answer to the proverbial question, "Who's your daddy?"
18 years, 18 years,
She got one of yo kids got you for 18 years
I can just picture someone tracking down an anonymous sperm donor and trying to get child support out of them. Or is this subject covered in the contract you sign at the clinic?
I wonder now that Anonymous Sperm Donors can be tracked down, if Anonymous Cowards can also be tracked down?
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.
What I'm noticing here is that these records have had to be held since around 1980... which suggests that it never really was that anonymous. I mean, back in 1990 you could still get DNA testing done (for a price).
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
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.
Y'know, I've been considering donating sperm, 'cause I fit a profile (I'm tall, pale and went to plenty of school). Where does one sign up to donate? Err, sell, rather. Beer money and all.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
A lot more apealing than giveing blood... Get paid to jack off? Just set up a nightly pick-up route in the freshman dormatories of any college!
A quick google search of the guys name after a google news search of the terms "sperm" "oral" and "child support"
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Whats the deal with this, im young, tall, white, middle class, no major health conditions in my family history, 160 something IQ, enroled in college... I bet i could make some decent $. Need to buy an engagement ring, but wouldnt that be weird telling her how i got the money...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
And you know this how exactly?
I hear this bullshit from people all of the time. One of my friend's insists I'm a "rare case." My parents, my only set of parents before you come up with some stupid term for the people who had to fuck to make me, are unable to have children.
Outside of having weird questions (How do I know my medical history? How do I know my ancestry? Eventually I guess you give up and realize you don't know those things, and neither does anybody else), I'm no different than anyone else.
What I wonder about this situation is why does the kid want to know? I don't understand the urge to meet the particular people who have donated their genes to your parents. If I did meet my genetic "parents," if they must so be called, they would be no different from any other random SOB off the street. What this kid needs to learn to appreciate is that he has loving parents who he wasn't forced onto because of a drunken accident.
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jonathan barket
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.
Oh god..you just had to didn't you? Think of the children!
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.
for hacker of the year. tres cool.
Another way to look at it is donors are helping someone who would otherwise not have their own child to love through a theraputic process that allows the reciever to conceive. Whether or not you agree with the ethical/legal concensus achieved so far is a different argument. Onwards, if the child feels a need to contact me in the first place because its a human and being human it may feel some qualitative feeling of comfort in meeting the next person up in it's lineage that goes back in an unbroken chain to algae give or take a billionish years ago. Your right, I would be a donor not a parent - but if the child wanted to see me I wouldn't be so callous as to not give it an audience.
Shh.
A case of too much Slashdot reading, methinks.
Stuck down a hole! In the middle of the night! With an owl!
How many people like me glanced quickly at that headline and saw "DNA and Online Search Finds Birth Patent"?
The scariest thing is if it really had said patent I wouldn't have found it that implausible.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
In these child support cases, the only thing concerning the judge is the interest of the child. Crime means nothing. So, the guy is doomed to lose in family court.
He should try a civil suit for damages though. Punitive damages would be neat. Every month he pays her, and every month she pays him. If triple damages are awarded, he could make out pretty well.
Just for revenge, criminal charges of fraud would be fun too. That's yet another court.
First something quite like original Babel fish, then these singing mice, and now tracking down anonymous fathers. Well, what Arthur Dent donated was just his DNA, but similiarity is striking, isn't it?
I don't totally agree with this, but by the same token I don't think it should go completly the other way eigther.
It should be possible for the 'birth parents' to deny thier identies being given without consent however.
My aunt gave birth to three children in her life, but gave the second one up for adoption. No one knew except (maybe, not a clear detail here) her best friend who she stayed with the last 5 months of the pregnancy and she claimed the child had been still-born.
Fast forward almost thirty years and she has hunted down her biological relatives. Unfortunately this was two years after my aunt had died of cancer.
She visited her two 'brothers' and met a few of her 'aunts' and 'cousins' and that's about it other than the occasional letter to her brothers(actually 1/2 brothers, even to each other).
Generally it was minor splash in peoples lives, but no big deal other than the sadness that she didn't find us before my aunt passed away.
How such a thing goese down really depends on the people involved. If they've all got a fairly healthy grip on themselves and thier lives it's likely to be o.k., if not drama may ensue.
In general I think the 'birth' parent should have say over thier own anonymity, as should the adoptee for that matter. Though I wouldn't take issue if certain medical data was made available to the adoptee, as long as it was done VERY carefully.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
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.