Instead of a small number of donors, maybe every male should donate sperm like it's jury duty or something...
I would prefer to not be forced by the government to give up bodily fluids so that people can have children.
This is a bad idea.
I do find the idea of someone fathering that many children inherently weird and creepy. It appears that this person is also accused of misleading the women who received the donations, which is obviously wrong in itself. There's probably all kinds of reasons to throw the book at this particular individual. I just wish the bullshit eugenic arguments could be left out of it.
1 - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1311238/Brother-sis...
> The couple, who hailed from different towns, about 100 miles apart, were both out with friends when they met in a nightclub in a third town several years ago.
> So strong was their mutual attraction that just one week after meeting, they both felt they had known each other for a lifetime.
2 - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mysteries-love/2...
I'll also mention that such a sibling network can actually cause the problem.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/half-siblings-with-two-children-to...
> After tracking down her half-brother on Facebook, Ms Parra eventually met Mr Parra and the pair felt attracted to one another. "We didn't want to realise it, we were angry with ourselves because it was hard to admit and break that taboo: we are siblings even though we didn't feel that way."
> After just a few days, the half-siblings felt they couldn't carry on without seeing each other again. "Imagine liking a girl and, for a moral reason, being forbidden to be with her. It's really hard to deal with," Mr Parra declared.
People shouldn't have to go the route of genetic testing, which apparently has serious privacy implications, just to have kids
I don't have children, so my question may come across as callous, but how would you not?
Aside from the genetic relatives issue there are a host of other medical issues and complications that arise from not having the full identity of the other parent. Considering that this particular part of the issue that can only arise in adulthood, I was sort of assuming that you'd almost certainly explain the situation to them by that point.
If this is an un-partnered mother and her children, then sure, much less excuse to not tell the kid, and much less reason to not tell them. But for partnered couples there's an inherent friction built in.
That just doesn’t sound very plausible to me…
> The donor "deliberately misinformed" prospective parents about the number of children he had already fathered in the past, the district court in The Hague said.
It will increase somewhat, but not 'greatly'. At least, I would be interested to see some actual data on this for the case of the children of half siblings. For cousins the additional risk is very small: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/03/health/no-genetic-reason-...
While incest is legal in the Netherlands, unintended inbreeding and genetic disorders are not good outcomes for a sperm donation service and so they have guardrails. He's well over the guardrails.
People often wildly overestimate the actual risks of 'inbreeding' because their real objection is either an ethical one or a simple gross out reaction. That is, they're not making an informed estimate of the actual risks and then concluding that these are unacceptably high; they're just searching for a more objective justification for their gut reaction.
Unfortunately, the objective justification that most people reach for (the risk of birth defects) is a very steep slippery slope to eugenics. Once you admit the principle that a higher than average risk of birth defects is sufficient reason for a couple to be legally prohibited from having children, then you are basically there.
"Dutch clinical guidelines state that a donor should not father more than 25 children in 12 families."
Clinicians have already made the informed estimate for me. 500-600 children with the same parent is a more than the recommended 25.
> a couple to be legally prohibited
There are no couples involved here. There's this donor, a clinic with an ethics board, and their clients. The court are not even looking in the area you're so concerned about, and nobody is thinking of making any laws in that area.
Incest is not illegal in the Netherlands, so have it away with your mother/father/sister/brother if it makes you happy. But if you open a fertility clinic, I would hope that you adhere to clinical best practises, including reducing the risk of inadvertent inbreeding.
I would be interested to know if there is any scientific justification for the limit that isn’t simply eugenics in disguise. It might be an empirically informed estimate guided by morally objectionable principles. Or it might be a round number someone pulled out of their ass. If you just want to trust that the limit has a sound basis, then that’s fair enough on a personal level. You are certainly not obliged to persuade random people on the internet otherwise.
> The court are not even looking in the area you're so concerned about, and nobody is thinking of making any laws in that area.
That’s my point. No-one in general is trying (yet) to stop particular pairs of humans procreating based on estimates of the chances of birth defects in their children. So what’s the justification for doing it in this case? I understand that there are no ‘couples’ involved in a romantic sense, but the sperm and egg don’t know the difference. If the concern is a genetic one, it should apply equally in either situation.
As I said before, there are probably lots of other reasons why what this guy has done is bad. I just don’t think this can be the reason.
1. some traits are objectively better. i dont like forced eugenics but choosing better ones can help
2. u cant force someone to sire children. thats immoral