Sir, Sir Colin Campbell (letter, Sept 21) allows expediency to trump a significant human rights issue: the interests of donor-conceived people to learn about their genetic history. The evidence is that these are very real, and not imagined, interests.

The Government decision to end gamete and embryo donor anonymity was influenced by a recognition that the only ethical form of donor conception was non-anonymous donation.

The full extent of the donor “crisis” in the UK has yet to be fully assessed and we should be wary of attributing the cause to the change in legislation. Births of children conceived as a result of donor insemination in the UK peaked in 1994, so the subsequent decline can hardly be attributed to a change in legislation that was announced a decade later. Donors are in short supply in many countries, even where donor anonymity still enjoys legal protection.

That identifiable donors can be recruited successfully if sufficient effort is expended is demonstrated by those clinics that have continued to do so.

In abolishing donor anonymity, the UK Government committed itself to the interests and rights of donor-conceived people. Now is the time for cool reflection, not hasty demands to turn back the clock.

ERIC BLYTH
Professor of Social Work
University of Huddersfield

Sir, I was chairman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) from 1994 to 2002 and support my predecessor, Colin Campbell, in calling for the restoration of anonymity for sperm donors.

During my chairmanship the authority discussed the issue thoroughly on several occasions and remained firmly of the view that anonymity was right. This was not only in order to ensure volunteers, but out of respect for the husband of the baby’s mother, who would assume the role of real father to the child in social and emotional terms.

The lobby for the removal of anonymity asserted a misleading parallel with adoption, but adoption has a history and a relinquishment that call for explanation. The argument that one needs to know one’s father in order to ascertain health issues is also false. Medical predictions can be made just as accurately from one’s own body.

Moreover, if knowing one’s father is so important, should not every child have the right to DNA test the adults in his or her household? That would have some surprising results.

BARONESS DEECH
Reading

Sir, Tom Ellis (letter, Sept 22) is alive today because sperm donation used to be anonymous.

Had it not been so, there is a good chance he would never have existed, surely a more terrible fate than not knowing your father.

TIM HAMMOND
London SW6

Sir, I had the misfortune of being conceived with donor sperm at a time when it was thought acceptable to dupe children about their paternity.

Those who sought an end to anonymity were not arguing that the interests of the child were superior to those of its biological or social parents. To be allowed knowledge of one’s genetic origins and ancestry is merely to be given parity with those who already have this information. Awareness of the identity of one’s parents is a norm within our society; withholding such information, simply to appease the reproductive choices of commissioning parents, is discriminatory.

Donor conception is carried out under the auspices of medical practitioners, who are bound by the Hippocratic Oath “to do no harm”. Success has been measured in the number of live births but rigorous secrecy has prevented any genuine research into the long-term effects of donor conception on the parents who have used it or the people created by it.

Colin Campbell presided over the HFEA before the voices of adults conceived by donor sperm were heard, and there has been growing evidence to suggest that such people, with their unique life experiences, have indeed suffered harm. Their testimonies are too often derided by the fertility industry.

CHRISTINE WHIPP
Honiton, Devon

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