I dont understand why he cares? Also how could a clinic guarantee a specific number? Don't they normally implant (wrong word?) more embryos since they don't all take and that's how people sometimes end up with twins or triplets?
https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2019/10/oregon-doctor-says-h...
The problem comes when you have many generations of family marriages in a row.
The Catholic church tried to make cousin marriages taboo as a way to break up clans and solidify church power.
What people might not realize is even when there's not a specific disease caused by the inbreeding, there is still an overall negative effect on health, "inbreeding depression".
Here is a paper that estimates the effect in humans: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26131930.
Which is why this whole thing is immoral (not to mention dangerous) to begin with. How can you not assign children to both the (real/biological) father and mother to keep track of these things?
It's interesting how far left/liberal culture today mocks communities that have cousin marriages as "inbred" and "backward", yet they engage in severe and reckless practices that we have no idea how they're going to pan out.
2. My wife is adopted, has had some contact with her biological mother, but zero reliable information on her biological father (her bio mom lies about pretty much everything). She has shown no interest in the various genetic tests out there, even though she has to keep on writing on those health forms at her doctor "unknown" for all the "Does X run in your family" questions.
We're ending up in a society where people don't know who their offspring are, and where children don't know who their real parents are. This is untrodden ground, and may very well have extremely serious consequences.
Whereas artificial insemination is literally having the woman carry another man's child, it goes against conservative values (would they let another man sleep with the woman to impregnate her if there weren't artificial insemination?)
It's selfish behavior on both the donor and the recipient, and who ends up paying for it are the offspring and most likely society as well.
No, but we're in a large society where men can and do have sex with women (consensually or not) once and leave them pregnant. I'm not making a moral judgement, I'm saying that mostly anonymous sperm donations have been happening long before IVF and sperm banks were a thing, so the results aren't as unpredictable as you paint them.
I have 2 recessive things that I know I carry, thanks to genetic screening. If I boinked a half sibling, they'd probably be a carrier of 1 of them, and there's a 50-50 chance any resultant offspring would have the conditions.
(Neither would be fatal but both would be severe chronic things-- e.g. hemachromatosis.
There's probably other rarer recessive things that I'm a carrier of and don't even know about.
...you could take steps to assure safety first, thanks to genetic screening.
As if this excuses this sort of behavior.
Two of the children contacted him first. That might have been just them innocuously looking for their biological parent, or it might have been a demand for parental support. If it's the latter then having 17 or more children potentially making a demand on him would make a big difference to his life.
Also how could a clinic guarantee a specific number?
They could count the number of successful children born with sperm from a donor and stop using that donation once there are 5 children.
ivf nowadays is also very much more strict about what you transfer. i did ivf a few months ago and we only transferred one PGS tested, day 5 embryo because a second one was not going to do anything good for me or the pregnancy odds.
2-3 decades ago both the tech and the feelings around donor identities and limits were very different. but nowadays we’re moving towards smaller limits and open identity of some sort, while fewer donor gametes are necessary for people to get pregnant. it’s curious.
As for guaranteeing a specific number, first, if they couldn't guarantee that, why would they agree to the limit in the first place? And even if the guarantee was violated without intent, I would expect perhaps 6 or 7 children... not 17.
>Some go to the same school as the kids he has with his wife.
That's so awkward and uncomfortable for me to even think about it, being in this situation...
>Some go to the same school as the kids he has with his wife.
The objection that the clinic couldn't actually guarantee a specific number of children doesn't hold water since they could have stopped using his sperm once the 5th child was born.
For IVF, the best practice is to implant 3-4 embryos, sometimes less when the woman doesn't have fertility issues. Obviously circumstances vary and IVF results in more multiples, but you're not going to get 5 sets of triplets if the clinic is doing what they agreed to do.
i had genetically tested day 5 blastocysts with my last cycle and most fertility doctors will not dare transfer more than one of those at a time regardless of age. but that is the best quality to transfer nowadays.
nobody wants to optimize for multiples any more since the rate of issues for both the embryos and the gestational parent are pretty high.
Let's assume his 17 kids (k) are locals. Let's say he lives in a city with 1 million people. That's 500000 potential other sex mates (assuming hetero) We're only interested in people more less our age, about 20% of the population (actually much smaller), so 100 000 = N
Chance of incest = 1 - p where p = N!/(N^k (N-k)!)
Using the sterling's approximation, and that half his kids are opposite gender, k -> k / 2 = 6.5
About 2 in 10 000 chance of incest. Which are really high for something many people consider worse than death.
Now, my assumption of 20% is too generous. What if it's 10%, and he has more, undiscovered kids (presumably who haven't gotten tested)? Let's say 30 kids (it's happened)
1 in 2 thousand for every mate. You wouldn't get into a car that had those odds of a fatal accident, never mind 6, 10, 30 times.
Either they shouldn't have guaranteed this, and made it clear that they couldn't, or they should have abided by the agreement. Either way, the clinic is at fault.
Some of his kids went to the same schools and churches.
A friend of mine made a deposit in a sperm donor bank prior to getting a vasectomy. Two years later, he met a woman, who he dated for a few weeks before breaking it off.
9 months later, he was presented with child support demands from the state. She had stalked him, determined he had made a deposit in the sperm bank, then specifically chosen his profile to get pregnant.
He is now liable for child support, whether he likes it or not, for the rest of his life (California, in case its of importance). They didn't have sex - she stalked him, got artificially inseminated, and then went to the state to extract money from him. He now has a kid he never wanted, and is resigned to being a father to the child, even though he never planned it and it was forced upon him by a criminal stalker.
This highlights just how dangerous it is for men to use these services. Clearly, more regulation and oversight is required - especially if sperm banks are making their own decisions about how their resources are applied.
The relevant law in California states that sperm donors are not legal parents: “The donor of semen provided to a licensed physician and surgeon or to a licensed sperm bank for use in assisted reproduction of a woman other than the donor’s spouse is treated in law as if he were not the natural parent of a child thereby conceived, unless otherwise agreed to in a writing signed by the donor and the woman prior to the conception of the child,” states California Family Code 7613.
i have a further thought - i am a legal owner of an “intimate partner” storage account where my partner’s sperm is stored for only my use as their spouse. even with the very very low FDA testing/paperwork bar for this type of account, there’s a paper trail that can be followed and a chain of custody for every single vial ever used. they’ll have even more documentation if the friend’s sperm was ever for sale.
Like I said before, either your friend lied or he needs a better lawyer. Given the story that you stated, the law is definitely on his side.
Anyway, he fought back and is now a very dedicated father. He has visitation rights, and soon enough the childs decision to move in with her Dad, because her Mom is a criminal, will be ratified in court ..
This is the problem with people saying "this isn't legal in America": it's all based on how good your lawyer is, and if you can't afford Johnny Cochrane, you get screwed, no matter what the law says.
So can he not prove this in court ? Sure it still adds hassle for him to go through all this legal stuff. But it is not like he just has to shut up and pay IF what you said is true.
Your friend was not very wise here.