Sperm donor with ‘most cancers inflicting gene’ helped conceive almost 200 kids
Nearly 200 children across Europe including some British families face a sky-high risk of cancer after a sperm donor, whose sperm was used for 17 years, was found to carry a hidden genetic mutation
Nearly 200 children may get cancer after a sperm donor unknowingly carried an extremely risky gene mutation. The terrifying discovery, which was revealed in a new bombshell investigation, showed that a handful of British families who travelled to Denmark for fertility treatment have been informed they may be affected.
The investigation, which was conducted by 14 public service broadcasters, was part of the European Broadcasting Union’s Investigative Journalism Network. The shocking exposé found that sperm came from an anonymous man who was paid to donate as a student, starting in 2005.
Alarmingly, the investigation discovered that the man’s genetically defected sperm was used by women for around 17 years.
The sperm donor consequently endangered at least 197 children whom he fathered across Europe, as he did not know he carried a genetic mutation that dramatically raises the risk of cancer. The man, who was deemed healthy and passed the donor screening checks, was unaware that the DNA in some of his cells mutated before he was born.
It damaged the TP53 gene, which has the crucial role of preventing the body’s cells turning cancerous, the BBC reported. Although the harmful TP53 mutation is present in only about 20% of the donor’s sperm, and not in most of his body, any child conceived with affected sperm inherits the faulty gene in every cell, resulting in Li Fraumeni syndrome.
This rare condition carries up to a 90% lifetime risk of developing cancer, often striking in childhood or as breast cancer later on. Tragically, some children have already died, and only a few who inherit the mutation are expected to avoid cancer in their lifetimes.
“It is a dreadful diagnosis,” Professor Clare Turnbull, a cancer geneticist at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, told the BBC. “It’s a very challenging diagnosis to land on a family, there is a lifelong burden of living with that risk, it’s clearly devastating.”
Céline, not her real name, a single mum in France whose child was conceived with the donor’s sperm 14 years ago, learnt that her daughter carried the mutation. The mum reportedly got a call from the fertility clinic she used in Belgium urging her to get her daughter screened.
She said she had “absolutely no hard feelings” towards the donor but said it was unacceptable she was given sperm that “wasn’t clean, that wasn’t safe, that carried a risk”, the BBC reported. The mum opened up about the fear of cancer looming over her family, as she said: “We don’t know when, we don’t know which one, and we don’t know how many.
“I understand that there’s a high chance it’s going to happen and when it does, we’ll fight and if there are several, we’ll fight several times.” Although the donor’s sperm was never sold directly to UK clinics, the BBC has confirmed that a “very small” number of British families used the sperm while undergoing fertility treatment in Denmark.
Following the investigation, Danish authorities notified the UK’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), whose chief executive Peter Thompson said affected women “have been told about the donor by the Danish clinic at which they were treated”. Doctors first raised the alarm after discovering children conceived with the donor’s sperm were developing cancer, with Dr Edwige Kasper reporting: “We have many children that have already developed a cancer.
“We have some children that have developed already two different cancers and some of them have already died at a very early age.” While at least 197 children across 14 countries are known to have been conceived with the donor’s sperm, the true number, and how many inherited the dangerous gene variant, remains unclear.
Concerned UK parents are advised to contact their clinic and the relevant fertility authority. Denmark’s European Sperm Bank, which sold the sperm, said families affected had their “deepest sympathy” and admitted the sperm was used to make too many babies in some countries, as per the BBC.
The European Sperm Bank said the “donor himself and his family members are not ill” and such a mutation is “not detected preventatively by genetic screening”. Additionally, they “immediately blocked” the donor once the problem with his sperm was discovered.
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