Liverpool in the UK needs to recruit more sperm donors

Liverpool’s sperm bank is running dry due to a drought of willing donors.
Rule changes mean men who donate sperm can no longer hide their identities and are not paid. This has “decimated” the number of willing volunteers, according to Prof Charles Kingsland, founder of the Hewitt Fertility Centre in Liverpool Women’s Hospital.
Prof Kingsland said there is a growing need for sperm donors, but around another 200 men need to sign up in Liverpool for fertility experts to keep pace with demand. Prof Kingsland said: “The law changed so that a child has a right to know their genetic parent and donors cannot be paid for their service.
“Unsurprisingly, that decimated our sperm donation programme. It had a devastating impact. “Who is going to donate if you do not get paid and you are not allowed to remain anonymous?”
The law changed in 2006 to allow children fathered by sperm donors to track down their biological dad once they turn 18. The number of donors coming forward has fallen steadily ever since.
Prof Kingsland, a professor of reproductive medicine and a consultant gynaecologist, said: “The whole process has become much more difficult, but the demand has not gone away.
“We are now seeing more people importing sperm from overseas. The sperm donation capital is Denmark. “They have a whole industry over there because the laws covering anonymity are different and donors can be paid more money.”
The Hewitt Fertility Centre is now appealing for more donors to come forward. Prof Kingsland said: “We need healthy Liverpudlian males who may wish to consider this to help people who are in a position where they need sperm donation.
“We have the Hewitt Fertility Centre here in our city, a huge internationally renowned service, but we just can’t get the number of donors.”
He continued: “Liverpudlians are legendarily generous and if anywhere should suffer from a shortage of donors, it shouldn’t be here.”
The shortage of donors places massive mental strain on the families desperate to start a family. Prof Kingsland said: “Not being able to find a donor takes a big psychological toll. “The rules now mean waiting times are inevitably protracted and demand far outstrips supply.”
The primary recipients of donor sperm are heterosexual couples suffering from male infertility, lesbian couples and single women.
When straight couples opt to use a sperm donor, rigorous testing is carried out to find a donor with similar physical characteristics to the male partner.
Donors must also be rigorously screened for diseases, genetic defects and other health problems to ensure the children are born as healthy as possible.
Article: 15th August 2015 www.liverpoolecho.co.uk

Giving - The Sperm and Egg Donor Perspective

The simple answer is to make money. But why come to the UK? Because in the UK there is a shortage of sperm and egg donors, or at least a perceived shortage, that's why. Whether or not there is a shortage depends who you speak to. Some British clinics have invested in advertising campaigns and the infrastructure to deal with the enquiries they generate and so have an excellent track record in recruiting donors. Other clinics appear to have given up and would rather refer patients to clinics overseas than to their colleagues (and competitors) down the street. So your impression of the situation depends very much on who you speak to at the Fertility Show. But what is the picture outside the microcosm of a wet weekend at Kensington Olympia? No one seems to know and this may be a stumbling block to finding a solution to this so-called shortage. The National Gamete Donation Strategy Group (NGDSG), a group set up by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), aims to find new approaches to raising awareness of donation and improving the care of donors in the UK. The Group needs to understand what the shortage is to assess the scale of the problem. I was honoured to be invited to join the NGDSG and am fully committed to its core objectives to: 1. increase awareness of donation and the information that donors receive 2. improve the 'customer service' that donors receive when they contact clinics 3. help donors provide better information about themselves for future families The NGDSG has only had one meeting (1), so it hasn't got all the answers yet, but if the enthusiasm and determination around the table at the first meeting are anything to go by I wouldn't rule it out. Other messages you hear about gamete donation at the exhibition stands at the Fertility Show are far from clear at best and downright misleading at their worst. There are clinics offering 'educated' donors, 'attractive' donors and 'caring' donors. While these attributes are something we may look for in a partner and we may desire for our children – who judges whether the donors meet these criteria and what difference does it make to the resulting child? For example, just considering the 'educated' description. What does this mean? According to the dictionary 'educated ' means 'having undergone education' or 'characterised by or displaying qualities of culture and learning'. Is being 'educated' therefore something children can inherit from a gamete donor? It is the old nature or nurture question all over again and to me it sounds more like nurture than nature. If you accept that it is nurture and you are using an anonymous donor from overseas that your child will never meet, what is the relevance of the 'educated' descriptor? If your child has the option of meeting the donor at 18 is it more important to you that the donor was educated? And if so, why? These questions are some of many which we will be addressing in our project 'When It Takes More Than Two'. The aim of the project is to clarify public and professional understanding of issues relating to donor conception, particularly in relation to identity and genetics. Donors are frequently sought and marketed on the basis of characteristics like being 'educated' whose heritability is complex or disputed at best, and non-existent at worst. The heritability of such personal predispositions is far more complex and contentious than the marketing materials would suggest. But even with more basic physical attributes – such as height (tallness is an almost universally preferred donor characteristic), hair and eye colour, which contain an element of Mendelian inheritance – observations show that strict Mendelian patterns of inheritance are not followed down the generations. The first event in a series of three is 'GIVING: THE GAMETE DONOR PERSPECTIVE'. A panel of speakers will address issues including what motivates people to donate, the criteria used to screen donors for their physiological and psychological health, and the placing of conditions upon the use of sperm or eggs one has donated. The latter is a controversial area where the HFEA has recently issued new policy, and where different parts of UK law are potentially in conflict. For example, a sperm donor may want to prevent his sperm from being used by a lesbian. The event it will take place on 12 December, for more details of this free event and others in the series please see the Progress Educational Trust's forthcoming events.

Shouldn't donors donate for 'altruism' rather than reward?

Many men and women who long for a baby - but are beset by fertility problems - will read with envy the news that Samantha Cameron has given birth to a baby girl and say a silent prayer that they too will be so blessed.
Yet the fact remains that, in many cases, their prayers will not be answered because of a chronic shortage in the number of people willing to donate eggs or sperm to help them conceive.

This week's announcement that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) will review its policy on paying sperm and egg donors raises, yet again, the issue of how we reconcile questions of need, knowledge and ethics.

In my view, the review is no bad thing. Sometimes we have to go back to the drawing board, if only to decide the first design was the best one. I firmly believe we should not pay people to be donors.

Let's be clear what this is about. One in seven couples has fertility problems, causing untold heartache. They have planned the nursery in their dreams and watched their friends completing their lives with children, but have to face the news that it won't be so easy - if at all possible - for them.

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