[color=rgb(63, 63, 63)]Cynthia Daily and her partner used a [/color][color=rgb(51, 103, 151)]sperm donor[/color][color=rgb(63, 63, 63)] to conceive a baby seven years ago, and they hoped that one day their son would get to know some of his half siblings - an extended family for modern times.
So Daily searched a Webbased registry for other children fathered by the same donor and helped to create an online group to track them. Over the years, she watched the number of children in her son's group grow. And grow.
Today there are 150 children , all conceived with sperm from one donor, in this group of half siblings, and more are on the way. "It's wild when we see them all together - they all look alike," said Ms. Daily, 48, a social worker in the Washington area who sometimes vacations with other families in her son's group.
As more women choose to have babies on their own, and the number of children born through artificial insemination increases, outsize groups of donor siblings are starting to appear. While Daily's group is among the largest, many others comprising 50 or more half siblings are cropping up on Web sites and in chat groups, where sperm donors are tagged with unique identifying numbers.
Now, there is growing concern among parents, donors and medical experts about potential negative consequences of having so many children fathered by the same donors, including the possibility that genes for rare diseases could be spread more widely through the population.
Some experts are even calling attention to the increased odds of accidental incest between half sisters and half brothers, who often live close to one another.
"My daughter knows her donor's number for this very reason," said the mother of a teenager conceived via sperm donation in California who asked that her name be withheld to protect her daughter's privacy. Critics say that fertility clinics and sperm banks are earning huge profits by allowing too many children to be conceived with sperm from popular donors.
"We have more rules that go into place when you buy a used car than when you buy sperm," said Debora L Spar, president of 'The [/color][color=rgb(51, 103, 151)]Baby Business[/color][color=rgb(63, 63, 63)] : How Money, Science and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception' , "It's very clear that the dealer can't sell you a lemon, and there's information about the history of the car. There are no such rules in the fertility industry right now."
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