Pride Angel

Liverpool's fertility clinic is having to buy in sperm from Manchester because its stocks are so low.

Professor Charles Kingsland, head of the Hewitt Fertility Centre based at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, said that a change in the law had led to a drastic decline in donors.

Prof Kingsland said: "It’s not just our stocks that are low, it is all stocks because the law concerning donors changed some years ago. Now donors only get reasonable expenses as opposed to getting paid and they can no longer remain anonymous."

The drop in donors began in 2005 when people donating sperm and eggs no longer had the right to remain anonymous or be entitled to payment. Now couples face a wait of over a year before a donor becomes available.

The clinic has been buying sperm from other sources including Manchester Fertility Services and a private clinic in Harley Street, London. Couples have also had to buy sperm themselves on the internet from reputable clinics in the US and Denmark.

Now the clinic is opening a second site in Knutsford, Cheshire, and has launched a campaign to encourage more men to help infertile couples.

Prof Kingsland said: "We have the technology. We are offering success rates that even ten years ago were unheard of. Now we need to replenish our sperm bank."

"With this campaign we just want to raise awareness. And the enormous benefit for the donor is that they really are helping couples get that longed-for family."

Read more about known sperm donation at www.prideangel.com

Article: 7th May 2013 Pride Angel

TV show ‘This Morning’ recently discussed women turning to sex with sperm donors in order to have a baby. Sally Windsor joined Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby on the sofa on Thursday and said more and more women are turning to websites where men offer natural insemination, as they believe they have a better chance of conceiving.

Sally explained that she herself once considered using the websites as she wanted to have a baby. She said: "As woman we can do this if we want to, there's no more of this idea of sitting back and waiting to become parents - that's a little bit archaic.

"We can take things into our own hands. If a woman wants to become a mother and they haven't met the right person, there's no sitting around feeling sorry for themselves.

‘Sperm banks are inaccessible and these are the lengths women are going to.’ said Sally Windsor

Also joining in on the debate was Kelly Rose Bradford who argued that women should never resort to sperm donor websites, as it's not fair on the child.

"(The websites are) bringing conceptions and starting a family down to scouring the internet for sperm," she said. Kelly Rose also highlighted the safety risks involved in using the sperm donor websites.

"I would question why these men are offering these services, it's almost like it's just some kind of sexual gratification for them." "It's very different to have a plan in place and go into this situation which could potentially put your health at risk, could potentially put your life at risk, because you don't know who you are meeting."

Erika co-founder of Pride Angel says "Women should not go down the route of natural insemination as a method of conception. If a donor is pushing this form of conception then his motives for creating a child are not the right ones."

"A minority of donors may suggest this form of conceiving over home insemination, saying that it is more effective than artificial insemination. However this is simply not true, home insemination performed correctly at the right times of the month, is just as effective and sometimes more effective for achieving pregnancy."

Pride Angel is the only sperm donor website which screens all profiles and does not allow sperm donors to offer natural insemination or request payment for sperm. Erika said "The majority of our donors genuinely want to help someone create a new life for all the right reasons."

Article: 2nd May 2013 www.u.tv

Looking for a sperm donor or co-parent? Register for free at www.prideangel.com

Olivias blog is her own personal view of donor conception: the issues, the questions, her reflections on family life, plus comments on media coverage and events: Olivia is one of the co-founders of DC Network and mother to two sons and a daughter, now adults, conceived both with and without donor help:

Just set back from London's busy Tottenham Court Road and round the corner from University College Hospital's very swizzy new Cancer Centre is the old Royal Ear Hospital, now taken over by UCL's Bartlett School of Architecture. This rather cold and slightly strange venue was where Progress Educational Trust's first of three free evening events on gamete donation took place on Wednesday night. It was titled Giving: The Donor Perspective. What seemed odd at the beginning was that there was only one donor on the panel, but on reflection I suspect it was probably the funding from the Wellcome Trust that determined the range of speakers, some of whom contributed more than others to understanding the donor perspective. But could it be something else as well...

Kriss Fearon a former egg donor and regular commentator on this blog kicked off the evening by exposing and then exploding the myth that egg donors are saints and sperm donors sleazy old men. She paid tribute to the privations that sperm donors have to agree to in order to be accepted by a clinic and their commitment to a changed life-style during their period of donating and put in a plea for Thank-You cards for sperm as well as egg donors. A great idea. Kriss herself is insistent that she is just an ordinary person wanting to help but also someone who, childless herself, is interested in passing on her genes - her biological legacy - as it was put by one of the two sperm donor stories featured in the information packs provided. Kriss also felt that money was a facilitator rather than a motivator for donation. She could not have donated on the three occasions that she did without all her expenses being covered, although this was at a time before significant money was involved in gamete donation. (If I've got anything wrong here Kriss just let me know and I'll correct it).

DC Network opposed the increased payment, euphemistically known as compensation, for donors that came about as part of a review of donation services in 2011. The current situation as set out on the HFEA website is -

Egg donor payment - As an egg donor you can receive compensation of up to £750 per cycle of donation, to reasonably cover any financial losses incurred in connection with the donation, with the provision to claim an excess to cover higher expenses (such as for travel, accommodation or childcare).

Sperm donor payment - Payment of donors is prohibited. As a sperm donors you can receive compensation of up to £35 per clinic visit, to reasonably cover any financial losses incurred in connection with the donation, with the provision to claim an excess to cover higher expenses (such as for travel, accommodation or childcare).

It is clear from the above that considerably more than £750 or £35 is available to be claimed. We heard at the meeting that many donors do not actually claim any money at all - although it was unclear if this applied more to sperm than egg donors - but some anecdotal evidence from recipients that has come DC Network's way regarding the profile/potential motivation of egg donors that they have been offered, leads the organisation to believe that what is needed is some good qualitative research on donors who have come forward since the £750 plus payment has become available. Shorter waiting lists and more UK egg donors is on the face of it wonderful news, but they do need to be the right people. It's quality, in terms of identifiability at 18, and not quantity that counts in the end.

Sorry, that's a bit of a detour from the PET meeting, which next featured Venessa Smith, Co-ordinator of Donor Services at the London Women's Clinic (LWC) and the London Sperm Bank as well as sometimes giving professional in-put on DCN's Preparation for Donor Conception Parenthood workshops. LWC has an incredibly dynamic, go-ahead and almost scarily market-oriented approach to donor recruitment. In response to a plea by the National Gamete Donation Trust ten years ago they have made enormous efforts to make donors feel wanted and respected by responding to enquiries promptly and pleasantly and giving them lots of information before they come through the door. In this way expectations are managed and although only five per cent of potential sperm donors actually make it through to the programme, they have sufficient men coming forward to be able to offer a good choice to recipients.

Erika Tranfield from the parenting connection web site Pride Angel was not able to be at the meeting in person because of illness. However, from her sick-bed she impressively put together a power-point presentation with co-ordinated sound that put a powerful argument for known donation.

In these blogs I have often found myself writing about the negative flip-side of known donation, the agreements that have turned sour, the changed emotions and expectations once a child is born and the horrible court decisions that have led to children being made to spend time with a donor 'parent' against their will. Of course there is a very positive side too. These arrangements can be wonderful for children and parents alike. Erika's organisation is undoubtedly the responsible and ethical face of known donation. Donors and recipients are encouraged to use HFEA licensed clinics, consult counsellors and put in place agreements with solicitors. No 'natural insemination' allowed and safe-guards are in place to prevent donors being in touch with too many women, thereby potentially flouting the ten family HFEA rule. As anxious as I continue to feel about known donation I couldn't help feeling that what Pride Angel is offering is coming close to a future that has long been envisaged by Walter and I. This would be a time when some kind of non-profit agency would bring together donors and recipients and that clinics would only be involved in actual insemination or egg collection/embryo transfer. In this way donors and recipients could choose each other, possibly with support and guidance from non-partisan intermediaries who had the interests of families in mind, and doctors could do what they are best at. Which reminds me how wonderful it was to hear Allan Pacey, Chair of the British Fertility Society, say that he was just a scientist and should not be expected to know about what was best for families. Wish there were more of his sort around!

Lucy Frith, bioethicist from University of Liverpool, raised the issue of conditionality in donation, but even though the question was raised from the floor about recipients being able to place reciprocal conditions, the issue that I sometimes wonder about did not come to the fore. This is a bit controversial but I wonder if recipients are told the sexuality of their donor or given the choice about having a gay, lesbian or heterosexual donor. I am not homophobic and nor do I believe that sexuality is genetically inherited but I do know that young people, and often boys in particular, often go through a period of homophobia during their teenage years and that knowing that their donor was gay or lesbian might make coming to terms with their identity of being a donor conceived person more difficult for them. It might also be a shock for a young person to discover the sexuality of their donor if they choose to make contact post 18, although I would hope that by 2023 when first post 2005 conception young people have option of contact, that homosexuality would be so accepted as to be beyond comment. Of course if parents are comfortable with the sexuality of their donor and include this in discussions with the child then the issue is likely to be of less relevance. But in order to do this, recipients would need to know and I don't know if they are currently told.

Allan Pacey admitted at the end of the meeting that he had been expecting to be asked all sorts of difficult questions to do with his topic of donor screening, but it appeared that the radical deaf lobby had not heard about this event and Allan was untroubled by controversy.

What interested me in the long period devoted to question and comment from the audience was the difficulty that many people had in focusing on the donor. There were many questions to do with recipients and donor conceived people and their families, each the focus of the next two events. At one point I really felt the panel should have been referring questions to the five members of DC Network sitting on the wonderful lime green chairs in the audience. Could this be to do with the historically shadowy nature of the donor in donor conception, the unmentionable other (fertile) person who has for so long been unacknowledged. Could this have been the unintentional meaning behind having only one donor on the panel?

Article: Olivia's blog www.oliviasview.com

Read more about finding and becoming a known donor at www.prideangel.com

A lawyer who became a sperm donor and donated sperm to pay his way through college has learned that he has fathered an astonishing 70 children.

More than 15 of those have already attempted to contact 33-year-old Ben Seisler.

The sperm donor confessed to his fiancée as part of a new reality show, 'Sperm Donor', that aired on the Style Network on Tuesday.

Seisler donated sperm for three years while attending law school at George Mason, Virginia. He earned around $150 per donation.

He originally planned to remain anonymous but later joined an online registry called the Donor Sibling Registry that connects offspring and siblings to each other and their donors, Boston Globe reported.

During the reality show Seisler also comes face to face with two of his biological children, a boy and a girl.

The Boston lawyer said there is no 'road map' for the situation he is in now.

'It was kind of wild,' he said after meeting the children. 'On the one hand, these kids are biologically my kids. On the other hand they are not my kids. I didn't raise them. I have no control over how they are raised.'

View You Tube click, where sperm donor confesses to his fiancee You Tube.

Article: 29th September 2011 www.dailmail.co.uk

Read more about finding a known sperm donor, or donating sperm at www.prideangel.com

The increasing number of children born through sperm donation, and the fact that many of those children are just now reaching adulthood, is leading to a revolution in the way we define families. A Tuesday Post story examined how children conceived this way are beginning to search for the donors. (University of California Press)

But what do the donors think? How much responsibility do they feel? A new book is providing some answers. “Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm,” (University of California Press, September 2011) by Rene Almeling, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Yale University, provides insights into the relationships between donors, recipients and the children conceived. Over fours years, Almeling studied six sperm banks and interviewed their founders and staffers. She also interviewed 40 donors.

One of the fascinating aspects of Almeling’s research is that she explored how donors, both egg and sperm, perceive their own roles in a family. She found that, despite conventional wisdom, it’s the male donors who feel a stronger connection.

“One of the most surprising things I found was that sperm donors have a straightforward view of themselves as fathers, while egg donors insist they are not mothers,” she wrote me in an e-mail conversation we had about her book. She went on to suggest some explanations for the difference:

“My research points to a long-standing cultural assumption in which the male contribution to reproduction is seen as primary. Indeed, the ancient Greeks, who thought of men as providing the generative seed and women the nurturing soil, would recognize a modern-day incarnation of this formulation in fertility agencies. Sperm donors think of their seed as essential to the child, down playing the role of the recipients. Egg donors insist that their contribution is “just an egg,” pointing to the recipient as the mother, because she is the one who nurtures by carrying the pregnancy, giving birth and raising the child.

Here’s more from Washington Posts Q&A:

Q. With male donors seeing themselves as “fathers,” does it follow that they might be more open to establishing relationships with the children that are created from their sperm?

Almeling: No. In fact, I found that both sperm donors and egg donors were generally willing to meet children who requested it, or at the very least, to provide updated medical information. It is just that the men couched those feelings of responsibility in terms of being a parent, whereas the women did not.

Q. As more and more families are formed using donors, what sorts of ramifications might these perspectives have for the families involved and our cultural definition of family?

Almeling: Reproductive technologies have made it possible to partition motherhood into different elements. The woman who provides the egg, the woman who carries the pregnancy, and the woman who raises the child can each lay claim (or not) to the label of “mother.”

However, in our culture, it is still the case that providing the sperm makes one a father. As more and more families are created through what is called “assisted reproduction,” it will be interesting to see whether definitions of paternity emerge that are as flexible as our definitions of maternity.

Q. Given your research, do you think donors should have more rights? More information? More guidance?

Almeling:Based on my interviews with donors, one of the recommendations I would make is that men be encouraged to seriously consider the ramifications of sperm donation.

Most egg agencies require that women undergo psychological screening, with one of the primary goals being to ensure that they have thought through the prospect of biological offspring. Sperm banks do not require this kind of screening. They are content to let men focus on short-term financial gain rather than long-term implications, and I think it does sperm donors a disservice.

In terms of egg donation, there is a critical lack of data about the long-term effects of taking fertility medications. The egg agencies where I did research did a good job of informing women of risks associated with egg donation, but for women’s consent to be truly informed, those clinical studies need to be done.

Article: 28.09.11 www.washingtonpost.com by Janice D'Arcy

Read more about known sperm donation and donating sperm or eggs at www.prideangel.com

Men willing to donate sperm help to create more than 800 babies in Britain every year through fertility clinics and hundreds more through personal arrangement – but now we are facing a shortage of "sperm donor daddies".

As many as 1 in every 6 people will experience fertility problems, and for many infertile couples, lesbian couples and single women – a sperm donor is the only way of achieving their dream of becoming a parent.

But as their identity is protected through fertility clinic donations, little is known about the men who make conception possible. Only the children they create are allowed to learn their names – and then not until their 18th birthday. Here, the 'Sun' newspaper talks to three men who have donated their sperm.

Ian Mann, 30
IAN, a gay pub quiz host from London, wanted to help childless couples but stopped donating after learning he carries the cystic fibrosis gene. "I got involved with sperm donating a few years ago when I was at the Manchester Pride Festival. "There was a stand for an organisation called Pride Angel which connects sperm and egg donors with infertile and same-sex couples. "I was at the age where I might have been thinking about having kids. "The fact is, I wasn't – but it got me thinking about how could I help.

"I signed up at the website for Pride Angel, which offers a completely free service, but for a while I did not connect with anyone I felt comfortable donating to. "You're put in direct contact with whoever you're considering and you're encouraged to keep in touch with your donor family. "Having a child is a huge commitment and I wanted to be certain whoever I was helping was going to be up to the job.

"Around the same time, I also started donating to the London Women's Clinic (LWC), a renowned IVF clinic on Harley Street. "I was warned that any children resulting from my donations could get in touch when they turned 18. It didn't faze me. "I figured that the chance of them looking me up was pretty slim. "Why would they bother when they had been brought up by two loving parents? "I was told my sperm were pretty strong, so everything seemed great. Then I had a screening by the LWC. "My jaw hit the floor when the results came back that I was carrying a dormant cystic fibrosis gene. "It meant that if my sperm was paired with an egg that had the same gene, the child would have cystic fibrosis.

"The odds were tiny but, of course, it's a chance no one wants to take. All my donations were destroyed and that was the end of that. "I was pretty depressed about it and spoke to my mum. She said there was no history of CF in our family. It was just one of those things. "Since then, I've got in touch with a couple of women through Pride Angel who are desperate to become mums. We're sussing each other out and so far it's going well. "So long as they get tested to make sure they're not CF carriers as well, my faulty gene won't be an issue. "I wish other men would consider being donors. There are so many people out there who would make great parents and just need a little help."

Pride Angel comments: The chance being a cystic fibrosis carrier is 1 in 25 people, so it relatively common. Many people will go through life being totally unaware of carrying the faulty gene, as it will not result in you having a child with cystic fibrosis unless you conceive with another person who in a carrier. When two people with the single mutation have a child, there is a 25% chance that the child will have CF, 50% chance that the child will be a carrier and 25% chance that the child with not be affected.

It is wonderful news to hear about men like Ian who are happy to help childless couples create the family they are longing for.

Mark Jackson, 43
MARK, a railway signalman from Doncaster, has been a donor for seven years, helping at least two families. While partner Jenny, 33, with whom he has two sons and a stepson, accepts his decision, she wasn't always keen.

"Just over six years ago I was watching coverage of the tsunami in the Far East and I felt so insignificant, like nothing I did would ever make a difference. "As I was looking at those awful photos, I saw a news bulletin flash up about new anonymity laws for sperm and egg donors. "I decided to do some research online and found out about huge donor shortages and rising demand. It really struck a chord – tens of thousands of couples were being denied the chance to have a family. "Back then I had no desire to be a dad, although I wasn't ruling it out in the future. "But I knew I wanted to help. I really didn't mind if a child came knocking on my door in 18 years as long as someone's life had been made better.

"I looked on the website for the National Gamete Donation Trust, a government-funded charity, and booked an appointment at the Manchester Fertility Services clinic. "There I had the tests to show my sperm was freezable and, in 2005, I donated nine samples over a three-month period. "I had to make regular 150-mile round trips to the clinic, taking unpaid time off work and only getting very basic expenses. But that wasn't why I was doing it.

"Then four years ago I met Jenny. We hit it off instantly. She had an eight-year-old son from a previous relationship and I knew she wanted another child. "In September 2008 we had Lewis. It was then that she became cautious about my donating sperm, worrying about Lewis having half-brothers and sisters turning up in years to come demanding to be part of our family. "She didn't understand that I just wanted to help other couples have what we had had. "But she knew I wouldn't back down and would carry on donating until I had helped my full quota of ten couples to have a child. "I think we accepted our differences. I have donated 19 times in total.

"Last year Jenny and I had another baby boy, Finley, and I think it was about then she started to understand me better. "As we got older she realised how many of our friends were having problems conceiving. "For someone to help them out by donating sperm, or eggs for the woman, was amazing. "She now talks openly to friends and family about what I do. "If it wasn't for the fact we want another baby she would donate her eggs.

"It's a tragedy so many people are denied three IVF attempts because of postcode lotteries – to pay thousands of pounds yourself isn't always possible. "In a couple of years I'll be too old to donate. I want to encourage more men to make someone's life better."

Dave Selkirk, 27
DAVE, a barman from south London, spent a year donating sperm and could have helped father up to 20 children. "I think of it as a charity donation. Not everyone has a lot of money to give – but any man can donate his sperm. "Blokes go out and get girls pregnant on one-night stands, yet there are lots of desperate people out there who can't have children.

"It costs me nothing to give it but to the person who receives it, it's a child. "I started donating when I moved to the UK from South Africa. At first it was just to pay my grocery bills after I got into a bit of debt. "You were allowed to donate up to twice a week and got £15 a time. "But then it became more than that to me. "I felt a sense of fulfilment thinking that I had helped others. "You can help a maximum of ten families and most will have one or two children. "It's all anonymous but it is in the contract that the children can contact you when they turn 18. "The parents are never allowed to contact you.

"So yes, it would be strange if in 18 years' time 20 kids came knocking at my door saying I was their dad. "I had to speak to a psychiatrist at the clinic about this and they talk through the options. "It's difficult to know exactly how I'd react until it happens but I feel I'd be ready to cope. "I was single when I made my donations and now I have a girlfriend. "It was something I had to discuss with her and she knows that it's a very real possibility. "She was none too pleased but it's something we talked through and right now, we're happy."

Article extracts: 22nd September 2011 www.thesun.co.uk

Ever considered donating sperm to help lesbian, single or infertile couples? visit www.prideangel.com

With one Toronto man estimating he has up to 1,000 half-siblings, some fertility-treatment experts are calling on Canada to legally restrict how many children can be born from a single donor’s semen.

The growing families of donor offspring could cause unusual spread of genetic malformations, raise the risk of inadvertent incest between biological brothers and sisters and prove emotionally taxing to the children, critics say.

Although medical groups and others already recommend restrictions in the number of pregnancies per donor, legislation is needed to ensure sperm banks and their suppliers follow the proper limits, said Juliet Guichon, a bio-ethics professor at the Unviersity of Calgary.

“It [self regulation] is not working,” said Prof. Guichon. “There’s no incentive. It’s the market economy: why would you limit business?” Various reports on the infertility industry, including the 1993 federal Royal commission on new reproductive technology and an earlier B.C. commission, have actually been recommending limits of as few as six pregnancies per donor for the last 30 years, she said.

Britain, some Australian states, New Zealand, the Netherlands and a handful of other European countries already have laws that restrict the number of children per donor, Prof. Guichon noted.

The issue came to the fore again this week, however, with reports from the U.S. — which has no legislated limits — that one donor there has 150 offspring. The genetic siblings have been catalogued on an unofficial but widely used American web site — the Donor Sibling Registry — that brings together such relatives, sometimes based on the number assigned to the donor by his sperm bank.

The Colorado-based registry’s director says another group of 75 offspring includes several Canadians. About 95% of sperm used in artificial insemination and in-vitro fertilization treatments here actually comes from the States.

Barry Stevens, a Toronto filmmaker, said he was born in the U.K. in 1952 with sperm from a donor who supplied his semen over about three decades, and probably produced 500 to 1,000 children, now spread through Britian, Canada and other countries.

“There should be limits, because if some offspring want to find their relatives, and want to meet their donor … it’s kind of daunting when it’s in the hundreds,” he said. “For some, it becomes kind of creepy and freaky.”

The fertility industry has restricted its practices considerably since the start of artificial-insemination around the middle of the last century, but critics say the lack of regulation or monitoring of what happens to donor sperm means the real-life practice is still largely unknown.

At ReproMed, which runs Canada’s only sperm bank, administrators do impose restrictions, said Dr. Alfonso Del Vaille, its director. Donors are limited to three live births per 100,000 population in a given geographic area, though that could mean as many as 75 offspring in a city the size of Toronto.

Dr. Del Vaille said he would support legislated limits, so long as they are based on good science. The chief concern stemming from large donor families is the risk that half-siblings unknowingly enter sexual relationships, upping the risk of birth defects in any resulting children.

Mr. Stevens said he knows of donor offspring who have married or had sex with half siblings, and said the chance of that happening is greater than it might seem. He said he has talked to a U.S. donor who moved to Toronto and ended up by sheer coincidence living next door to a lesbian couple whose children were born with the use of his sperm.

Experts also worry about the possibility that a genetic flaw, which would be passed on to only a couple of children in a natural family, could be spread to dozens more through sperm or egg donation.

And there is also the less tangible effect of a child learning that their direct biological family extends far and wide. Wendy Kramer, the donor-registry’s director, recalls one mother who came to the web site anxious to find one or two genetic siblings to her daughter, an only child, only to discover the donor had sired 18 offspring.

“The mother was upset: ‘Oh, my God, I didn’t expect this … How do I create a connection with 18 families?’ ”

Even some of those in the fertility industry itself say there is a need to legislate limits, though doing so would likely further restrict the supply of donor sperm. “It’s one of those big picture areas that as a society and as a culture we really need to sit down and think about what we are doing,” said Roger Pierson, a University of Saskatchewan fertility expert and spokesman for the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society.

Which government would enact such laws in Canada is another question, though, since the federal Assisted Human Reproduction Act, designed to govern such matters, was declared mostly unconstitutional by the Supreme Court last year.

It could be that the provinces would have to band together and bring in legislation jointly, said Ms. Guichon. Other experts say the federal government, which still does regulate the importation of sperm, could impose rules allowing only sperm that has produced a limited number of offspring to be brought in to the country from elsewhere.

Article: 7th September 2011 www.news.nationalpost.com

Looking for a known sperm donor? check out thousands of profiles at www.prideangel.com

The National Gamete Donation Trust wants to listen to sperm and egg donors!

People think really carefully before they make that first enquiry about becoming an egg or sperm donor. It’s often prompted by the infertility of a close friend or family member. Most donors have thought about it on and off for several years before they contact a clinic.

There’s a big emotional investment, so the way the clinic behaves, especially with that first phone call or email, really matters, just as it matters to be treated decently when you get there.

The National Gamete Donation Trust works with donors on a daily basis and we get to hear lots of donor's stories. Too often the feedback is not good, and yet small changes in the way donors are treated could produce some big improvements.

To carry weight with the people who can make a difference, the Trust needs to prove that changes are necessary. We’re running a survey to gather evidence of what works and doesn’t work, and we need your help.

We want to hear both from donors who have completed their donation cycle and from people who enquired but did not donate. It’s important that donors are treated with respect; it’s also important to acknowledge the kindness that motivates enquirers.

We’ll use what donors tell us to make recommendations on how to treat donors through the whole process of donation, from that first phone call or email to sharing the outcome at the end of the cycle.

When you’ve known people with fertility problems finally achieve their much loved and hoped-for child, it is hard to understand why the people whose precious gift made that possible are sometimes treated so poorly. The minimum donors should receive for this unpaid act of generosity is to be treated well.

Please fill in our survey: www.ngdt.co.uk/donor-satisfaction-survey

For more about becoming a sperm or egg donor visit www.prideangel.com

Heartbroken women in The Netherlands have given birth to numerous children with Asperger's Syndrome after a sperm donor lied to them about the state of his health. For 18 months the man's semen has been used despite the fact that he suffers from the hereditary autistic disorder. Incredibly, he is still active as a sperm donor, but not at an official clinic. Dutch media said the man has fathered at least 22 children and several of those are already showing symptoms of autism.

Asperger's Syndrome is a type of development disorder retarding in the development of many basic skills, most notably the ability to socialize with others, to communicate, and to use imagination. Symptoms include children losing language or social skills, an inability to make friends easily, and developing unusual behaviour patterns, such as spending hours lining up toys or developing odd repetitive movements.

Despite passing on his syndrome and lying about his health, the man is still an active sperm donor Asperger's syndrome was named for the Austrian doctor, Hans Asperger, who first described the problems 1944, but it was not recognized as a unique disorder until much later.

The Dutch sperm donor is aged 30 and comes from the port city of Rotterdam. The woman who had babies as a result of his sperm only found out his true identity in the past month. As well as carrying the Asperger's gene, Dutch newspapers said he had also been treated for depression in the past. The women contacted the man via the Internet; this has become a popular method in Holland due to the long waiting lists at offical sperm banks and the high prices they charge.

Waiting periods vary from six months to two years and prices are usually between 500 and 1,000 pounds. The long waiting lists have also led hospitals to give preferential treatment to heterosexual couples. As a result, many single women and lesbian couples find it is much faster and cheaper to find sperm donors via the internet. 'There is a perceived added value in that the women get to meet the potential sperm donor, but the risks are also considerably higher,' said the Dutch newspaper AD. 'Some of the unofficial donors are reportedly only after sex or out to have as many donor children as possible.'

Identified only as Paul, the newspaper claimed he was a 'pathological liar.' Women have come forward to say that they had intercourse with him, or artificial insemination, after meeting him on websites like Verlangennaareenkind.nl and Bam-mam.nl. Those two sites have since banned him but there are fears he will continue to infect women with the autism gene by changing his identity and advertising elsewhere.

Erika co-founder of Pride Angel, the leading parenting connection website added 'This incident emphasises how important it is to personally meet and get to know your sperm donor, finding out as much as possible about their medical family history.' 'Fertility clinics can only perform limited screening tests, therefore personally getting to know a donor before taking them to a clinic for fertility treatment, is the safest form of sperm and egg donation'.

For more information about finding a known sperm or egg donor visit www.prideangel.com

Article: 14th August 2011 www.dailymail.co.uk

A single mother from north London is trying to lift the anonymity of her child's sperm donor.

The woman has been told her six-year-old son will never be able to trace his father because the child was conceived at a Spanish clinic. The case is understood to be the first of its kind and experts say it highlights the pitfalls for those who undergo IVF abroad.

It also has led to renewed calls for a system of cross-border regulations over fertility treatment. Under British law, children conceived in Britain are entitled to obtain the name and address of their biological donor when they reach 18. These details are held on a database run by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. But the HFEA has said it is powerless to act.

The mother, who is Jewish, used an English donor who was also Jewish and he provided sperm through the London Women's Clinic. But the clinic did not have any donor eggs, so the woman transported the sperm to a clinic in Marbella where her son was conceived in December 2005. This meant none of the sperm donor's identifiable details could be placed on the authority's database.

In a statement, the woman said she hoped "with all my heart" that the father of her child would still want to meet him. She said: "I still hope that one day, through my son, I may get to thank him after all for giving me this wonderful child, who brings such joy to so many people."

Article: 2nd August 2011 www.dailymail.co.uk

Read more about using a known sperm or egg donor at www.prideangel.com