![\"Sperm](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/62abe2c2-f5b1-45bf-8c78-21a2dbc90e61.jpeg\")
Sperm from the donor was used to conceive at least 67 children from 46 families. (Getty via CNN)<\/p>\nThe sperm of a man carrying a rare genetic mutation linked to cancer was used to conceive scores of children across Europe, prompting calls for greater regulation and a limit on the number of births allowed from a single donor.<\/p>\n
Sperm from the donor was used to conceive at least 67 children from 46 families born between 2008 and 2015, said Edwige Kasper, a biologist at Rouen University Hospital in France, during a presentation at the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics in Milan on Saturday. <\/p>\n
Ten of the children have already been diagnosed with cancer.<\/p>\n
Sperm from the donor was used to conceive at least 67 children from 46 families. (Getty via CNN)<\/p>\n
“At the heart of the problem seems to lie the regulation, or maybe the lack of regulation, of the number of births by a single donor,” she said.<\/p>\n
Analysis showed that the donor, who is himself healthy, had a rare mutation in a gene named TP53, which is likely to cause Li-Fraumeni syndrome, a rare disorder that increases a person’s risk of developing cancer.<\/p>\n
The mutation was not known when the donation was made, but children born from this donor have since been identified in eight different European countries: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom, Kasper said in her presentation.<\/p>\n
Ten of them have been diagnosed with cancers such as brain tumours and Hodgkin lymphoma, and another 13 children are carrying the gene but have not yet developed a cancer.<\/p>\n
They will require regular medical examinations due to their increased risk of developing cancer, and have a 50 per cent chance of transmitting it on to their own children, said Kasper.<\/p>\n
“The follow-up protocol involves whole-body MRI scans, MRI scans of the brain and, for adults, of the breast, ultrasound examination of the abdomen, and a clinical examination by a specialist,” Kasper said in a press release.<\/p>\n
“This is heavy and stressful for carriers, but we have seen its effectiveness in that it has enabled early detection of tumours and thus improved patients’ chances of survival.”\ufeff<\/p>\n
Tighter regulations needed<\/strong><\/p>\n Unlike in some cases of serial sperm donors, such as a Dutch man who was ordered to stop donating sperm after being found to have fathered between 500 and 600 children around the world, this man only donated to a single private sperm bank in Denmark named the European Sperm Bank.<\/p>\n Julie Paulli Budtz, vice-president of corporate communications at the European Sperm Bank, told CNN that it was “deeply affected by this case”.<\/p>\n “The donor has been thoroughly tested even above the required standards, but preventative genetic screening is reaching its limits here,” she said in a statement sent to CNN on Monday.<\/p>\n “Every human being has about 20,000 genes, and it is scientifically simply not possible to detect disease-causing mutations in a person’s gene pool if you don’t know what you are looking for.”<\/p>\n There is currently no limit on the number of children that are allowed to be born using a single donor, something which Budtz said the European Sperm Bank would like to change.<\/p>\n “This is also why, in addition to following national pregnancy limits, we have proactively implemented our own international limit of 75 families per donor,” she said.<\/p>\n This limit is self-imposed as regulations vary from country to country. <\/p>\n For example, France has a limit of 10 births per donor, while Denmark allows 12 and Germany allows up to 15, according to the press release.<\/p>\n “There is a major issue here concerning a lack of harmonised regulation across Europe,” Kasper said in the release. <\/p>\n “We need proper regulation at European level to try to prevent it happening again, and to implement measures to ensure a worldwide limit on the number of offspring conceived from the same donor.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The sperm of a man carrying a rare genetic mutation linked to cancer was used to conceive scores…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3846],"tags":[267,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-149389","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-genetics","8":"tag-genetics","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114608013664608744","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}