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SOME clinics in the US would continue to use sperm from a donor even if
babies had been born with abnormalities that suggested his sperm was genetically
flawed, researchers in North Carolina have found. They are now calling for
guidelines to be introduced.

About 30,000 babies are born by donor insemination in the US each year. Some
1.9 per cent have a structural or chromosomal abnormality. This is actually
lower than the rate in the general population, because of careful donor
screening, but devastating to the parents all the same.

Jeffrey Kuller and his colleagues at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill distributed questionnaires to 66 infertility experts asking what
they would do if they learned a child born of a sperm donor had a congenital
illness, such as Down鈥檚 syndrome or cleft palate. In the case of Down鈥檚
syndrome, which is usually caused by problems with the mother鈥檚 eggs, 52
respondents said they would continue to use the donor.

But with Turner鈥檚 syndrome, which is mostly of paternal origin but very rare,
they were split with 36 saying they would keep him on and 30 saying they would
not. 鈥淢ore formal guidelines should be established,鈥� says Kuller, who points out
that there are guidelines on other aspects of artificial reproduction, such as
how many times a single donor鈥檚 sperm should be used.

But the solution may not be that simple. 鈥淭he problem is by the time the baby
is born, the donor will already have achieved the quota [of 10 pregnancies],鈥�
says Virginia Bolton of King鈥檚 College Hospital in London.