European Sperm Bank exceeded legal limits for 81 donors

European Sperm Bank used sperm from at least 81 donors to make more women pregnant in Denmark than allowed by law, DR reports. The Danish Patient Safety Authority reported the sperm bank to police last year.

The figures come from a list that European Sperm Bank sent to the authority and that DR has obtained. The 81 donors began donating from 2013 onwards.

The bank also used sperm from 105 donors who began donating before 2013 to father more children than was recommended at the time. Those cases did not breach the law and are not part of the police case.

Under Danish law, sperm from one donor may be used to make no more than 12 women pregnant in Denmark. The limit is intended, among other things, to reduce the risk of inbreeding and the spread of serious inherited diseases.

Lone Sunde, a professor and consultant in clinical genetics at Aalborg University, said sperm donors are tested for several inherited diseases, but not everything can be detected.

“It is a risk we all face: carrying something in our genes that we do not know about,” she said.

Sunde said the number of cases was therefore serious. Health law expert Kent Kristensen of Aalborg University said the list did not point to isolated mistakes.

“These are not exceptions. This points towards something systematic,” he said.

One donor’s sperm was used to make 30 different women pregnant in Denmark, the highest number on the list. Several donors had been used for twice as many women as permitted by law.

The list shows only the number of Danish children for whom each donor is recorded as the biological father. The donors may have fathered more children abroad, as European Sperm Bank sells donor sperm to many parts of the world.

European Sperm Bank told the Danish Patient Safety Authority that its figures could contain errors. Women may have been registered incorrectly, and reported pregnancies may later have been lost.

Concern over inherited disease

The case has raised concerns about the potential spread of inherited diseases. DR has asked European Sperm Bank whether any of the 81 donors were blocked because of an increased risk of inherited disease. The sperm bank has not answered.

DR has previously reported on an anonymous donor known as “Kjeld”. His sperm was sold by European Sperm Bank in at least 14 countries and resulted in more than 200 children before the bank discovered a hidden genetic defect in some of his sperm cells.

Several donor children have died, and an unknown number inherited a lifelong genetic risk of cancer that neither the donor nor the sperm bank knew about when he was recruited.

The sperm bank blocked the use of Kjeld’s sperm, after which fertility clinics were tasked with contacting all affected women.

Sperm bank says controls have improved

European Sperm Bank, one of the world’s largest sperm banks, declined to give a television interview or respond to the criticism.

In a written response to DR, the company said systems in the fertility sector had historically not been robust enough, but that the situation had improved.

“As the figures clearly show, we now have very robust and secure control mechanisms. For donors used in Denmark and recruited since 2020, we have recorded one breach of the family limit,” the company wrote.

“With the knowledge we have today, we can see that systems across the fertility sector were historically not sufficiently robust. Today, everyone is much more aware of the challenges that can be associated with having many genetic relationships.”

European Sperm Bank was founded in Copenhagen in 2004. It supplies donor sperm to more than 1,000 fertility clinics worldwide, and says its donors have helped more than 70,000 children come into the world. Fertility clinics are required to report pregnancies back to the sperm bank.