Are Ova Donors Encouraging Incest?
Kerry Howley | January 11, 2008, 5:10pm
During the process of selling some genetic material, I found myself tapping into a social anxiety I couldn't quite understand. A few people around me--including one ultrasound technician--were worried that two of my spawn, born to different mothers through anonymous donations, would meet and fall hopelessly in love. Not knowing that they were genetically related, they would go on to reproduce. I thought this, um, statistically improbable. But for at least one member of the House of Lords, this possibility is enough to require all mothers who use donated sperm to disclose that fact:
A couple discovered after they had married that they were twins who had been split up at birth and adopted by separate families, according to a member of Britain's House of Lords.
British peer David Alton recounted the story to parliament last month to support his argument that artificially conceived children should be told who their biological parents are...
Alton said he had heard the story of the separated twins from a High Court judge who had dealt with the case.
"They met later in life and felt an inevitable attraction, and the judge had to deal with the consequences of the marriage that they entered into and all the issues of their separation," he said.
"I suspect that it will be a matter of litigation in the future if we do not make information of this kind available to children who have been donor-conceived," he said.
Note that this situation did not involve sperm or egg donation. And, given the lack of names here, the argument amounts to: "My judge friend told me about this thing that happened one time." I guess that's enough to make a new law in Britain at this point.
Hat Tip: Bill Piper.
Russ R | January 12, 2008, 10:31am | #
Why is this suddenly a concern now? Children have been adopted without knowing the identities of their biological parents for centuries. There has always been the remote possibility that siblings could meet and procreate. If anything, that probability should be falling, not rising.
Let's assume that adoption rates have remained more-or-less consistant over the years.
This is a generous assumption for 3 reasons:
1) Improved contraception and abortion technology would serve to reduce the probability of bearing unwanted offspring;
2) The probability of a woman dying in childbirth has been immensely reduced, resulting in fewer orphans; and
3) Changing societal norms would have make it less likely that an unwed mother would be pressured to give up a child for adoption.
As such, I would expect that the percentage of the population raised by adoptive parents has declined in the last century... but absent any data, I'll just assume it's remained constant.
Carrying on...
As the world's population has grown tremendously, while becoming more urbanized and geographically mobile, should not the probability of inadvertantly hooking up with a long-lost sibling have decreased significantly?
In pre-industrial times, most people wouldn't have travelled beyond a 100 mile radius of their place of birth. Wouldn't it be much more likely to encounter your biological sibling in the next village over yonder, than in, say... a city of millions... or in any of the dozens of cities of across the country... or any of the hundreds of cities around the world?
Maybe someday Google will help lost siblings reunite (in a non-incestuous manner), by letting users search for specific DNA sequences.
