For now, the bill is under consideration by the upper house of the British Parliament, the House of Lords. As Vremya Novostei notes, the prospects for this initiative are still unclear, but it is worth noting that recently English legislation has changed several times, consistently expanding citizens' access to information about their biological origins.
As early as 2004, the UK Ministry of Health launched the UK DonorLink program, under which all donors of genetic material could register, and test-tube children could obtain information about their biological parent, as well as about siblings. According to the program's rules, only citizens who have reached the age of 18 can access this data. Over a year of successful operation, dozens of pairs of genetic siblings found each other. Interestingly, the people trying to find chromosomal relatives were quite mature, aged 40 to 50 years.
But the British authorities considered that the voluntary principle of providing donor information still does not allow a huge number of Britons to get an answer to the question: 'Who am I?' Therefore, in April 2005, a law was passed abolishing the anonymity of sperm donors, immediately becoming scandalous. Then crowds of men took to the streets of English and Northern Irish cities, protesting against the declassification of laboratory archives. Most of them explained their reluctance to get acquainted with offspring by possible financial claims. Children, by the way, could turn out to be unnaturally numerous: British doctors openly explained that often one portion of donor material had to be divided among a dozen infertile couples. If one imagines that all children conceived as a result of in vitro fertilization (IVF) wanted to meet close relatives, the scale of the 'disaster' would be hard to imagine. After all, according to statistics, approximately 1,100 English parents per year turn to the donor bank of biological materials.
All this led to a real donor crisis. So, after the law was passed, not a single officially registered donor remained in Northern Ireland, and in England there were only 200 brave souls. English legislators have already stated that they are aware that their new bill only worsens the already difficult situation with donors. Who would want to donate sperm when in a couple of years any social worker or school principal can find the biological father and ask him, for example, how he did in elementary school. If a note about the method of conception is placed in the child's personal file, such a situation is not excluded. But legislators consider these temporary difficulties. The new amendment, in their opinion, will fundamentally change the composition of donors. Instead of college students wanting to earn money for drinks, adult conscious citizens who sincerely want to help their compatriots have children will come to genetic banks.
The British Fertility Council, which initiated the new amendment and opposes any anonymity, insists that knowledge of the habits, manners, and appearance of one's biological father will help one learn more about oneself. However, other arguments became decisive: in recent years, doctors have found more and more evidence that a number of diseases have a genetic basis, and therefore, their treatment may require studying the medical records of representatives of previous generations.
Despite the huge shortage of quality donors, many developed countries have already followed the English path. For example, every Swedish citizen can obtain information about how they were conceived and who their parents are. The same law has been in effect in New Zealand for several years, with the only amendment that donors who donated sperm before the law was passed can volunteer to register. The state guarantees them that information will be provided to descendants only when medically necessary. The most striking example is the open donor sperm bank in California, where the names of donors were never hidden from children. According to the bank's employees, none of the young Americans who requested information about the donors who helped bring them into the world intended to contact their biological parents.
Among European countries, the medical confidentiality of IVF is sacredly observed only in Denmark and Russia. The standard contract concluded with a man stipulates that he will never appear in the lives of his future children. In storage, portions of frozen sperm must remain for at least six months before being used. During this period, all hidden viruses, including HIV, can manifest. According to Russian medical statistics, donors are married men who lead a regular sex life, do not drink or smoke, and do not take medications or drugs. As a rule, doctors prefer men who already have one or two children as donors.