While the philosophical meaning of life can be aptly debated, biologically it is very clear: Passing on one’s own genes is intended to ensure the survival of the species. Life for the sake of life, so to speak. A man from the Netherlands has apparently taken this task a little too seriously in recent years and distributed his genetic material efficiently. But that should now be the end of it.
A court in The Hague ordered the man on Friday, under threat of punishment, not to give any more sperm donations. This is reported, among others, by the Reuters news agency and the British BBC, with reference to the court ruling. Accordingly, the man must also write to clinics to which he has already provided sperm donations so that they can no longer be used. The only exception: families who already have children by him and want more siblings. If he does not comply with the conditions, he faces a fine of 100,000 per violation, i.e. per child conceived.
The case of the busy Dutchman is not new. As early as 2017, he was banned from donating semen to clinics in the Netherlands. There, a donor is not allowed to father more than 25 children in 12 families, otherwise the possibility of ignorant half-siblings meeting later and in turn multiplying becomes too great. In the case of half-siblings who reproduce with each other, the chances of the child having disabilities are significantly higher. According to the court, this donor already had more than 100 children in the Netherlands alone in 2017. And those were just the numbers of the clinics established there. The accused is also said to have worked with several private companies that use web portals to find suitable donors for families who want children.
Now the man is back in court. An organization that protects the rights of donor children had sued him because numerous parents had come forward. Many felt misled. The man told them that he had fathered significantly fewer children than it later turned out to be. The judges estimate the man may have fathered between 550 and 600 children since he started donating in 2007.
The “New York Times” (NYT) wrote extensively about the case in 2021 and found a profile of the man with whom he offered his services on one of the web portals. After graduating, he worked as a social sciences teacher at a school and would currently deal with cryptocurrencies and work for a corresponding trading company. His strengths are “my optimism and my always cheerful character”, his weaknesses: he is a “dreamer” and often needs “time for myself because I am a sensitive person”.
In the NYT article, several affected Dutch women have their say. Two of them worked in the same preschool and eventually realized that their two nine-year-old children looked a lot alike. They got talking and finally found out that they had received genetic material for their artificial insemination from the same donor. In the city of these two women alone, who wanted to remain anonymous, there are other women who had used the now convicted man as a donor.
Another woman describes in the article how she met the donor at a train station in The Hague and was given a sample of his sperm for €165 to later have herself artificially inseminated.
But his children do not only live in the Netherlands today. According to the NYT, the man worked with a Danish clinic called Cryos, which sends sperm donations to dozens of countries. The man is said to have children in Australia, Italy, Serbia, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Switzerland, Romania, Denmark, Sweden, Mexico and the United States. Parents from Germany also raise the man’s children.
A German woman reports to the NYT 2021 how she acquired the man’s genetic material for artificial insemination via the Cryos company. In 2019, the company informed her by letter that, contrary to regulations, the man had gotten involved with numerous other private companies around the world in order to bring his genetic material to the people. When asked about the allegations by the NYT two years ago, the man wrote that he couldn’t recall anyone telling him he wasn’t allowed to donate sperm at other clinics. Cryos vehemently disagrees. He signed a contract to that effect.
But what drives people, in this case men, to father so many children? Experts see three main motives for donating semen on such a massive scale: money, generosity and the desire to pass on one’s genetic material. The third point in particular is often a key motivation. However, the Dutchman doesn’t want to know anything about that. He replied to NYT 2021 that the numbers circulating about him were exaggerated at best. He has about 250 children. “Estimates of up to 1000 are ridiculous. I am also disappointed in this obsession with numbers,” the man wrote. “I didn’t become a donor to reach any numbers but out of love and to help parents achieve their dream.”
Sources: Reuters, BBC, “New York Times”
