“Sperm from donor with cancer-causing gene was used to conceive almost 200 children” 10 December 2025
Donor Conceived UK is deeply concerned that this BBC article fails to use the term donor conceived or to include the voices of Donor Conceived People (DCP), despite reporting on an issue that affects our community most directly.
We welcome the BBC giving prominent coverage to serious failings within the fertility industry. This story is not new: when it first emerged in May of this year, 67 donor conceived people were known to be linked to this donor. That number has now risen to 197.
This increase is not merely shocking; it is a stark illustration of how deeply commodified the fertility industry has become. Behind the comforting narrative of “creating much-wanted babies” lies a system operating at scale, across borders, with insufficient regard for ethics, accountability, or long-term human impact.
This situation would not have escalated so dramatically had the rights and wellbeing of Donor Conceived People (DCP) been centred from the outset. Intending parents also deserve full transparency. Many parents we speak to are unaware of how easily very large sibling groups can form, even within the UK. With more than half of UK sperm imported, the enforcement of meaningful international family limits is, in practice, almost impossible.
As Donor Conceived adults, and through listening to many others, we know that even four or five genetic siblings can feel overwhelming. The UK’s so-called “10 family limit” can already translate into 25–30 Donor Conceived People (DCP). That is difficult enough to comprehend. One hundred and ninety-seven is unimaginable. The psychological and identity impacts are profound and lifelong.
Donor Conceived People (DCP) need more allies. The fertility industry must do better. Governments must do better. And the media must do better too. It is deeply disappointing that the BBC covered this story without including a single donor conceived voice.
We deserve to be heard.
***ENDS***
Notes
- More than 85,000 people have been born from donor treatment, through UK licensed clinics, since 1991.
- In some cases, clinics or donor banks will have closed since the donation or treatment took place. Often another clinic will have taken on a clinic’s records when they close. In these cases, HFEA contact the clinic which holds the closed clinic’s records, and the open clinic verifies the information they hold in those records on behalf of the closed clinic. For some other closed clinics there are other arrangements that allow the HFEA to request individual patient records and to verify the donor used by the patients by looking at these records.
- Between 2021 and 2025, more than 4,000 requests for information to the HFEA, relating to donation, have been responded to.
- By law parents do not have to disclose to their children that donor gametes were used in their conception therefore it is widely understood that the vast majority of donor conceived people don’t know they are donor conceived.
- Unless applicants to the HFEA records have also used DTCGT they will be unaware that the information given to them by the HFEA is incorrect.
- Donor Conceived UK is the only national organisation led by, and for, donor conceived people. We fill a huge and growing gap, addressing unmet life-span needs that are usually overlooked by fertility-focused organisations and minimised by Government.
- For more information visit our website, Home – A new peer-led charitable organisation to represent donor conceived people, donors and others affected by donor conception practises in the UK
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