Dear Fairfax Cryobank and CLI,
For years, we have been receiving emails from former sperm donors, like this one from today, requesting our help:
“…Can you guide me as to how I’d best get my donor number from Fairfax Cryobank? I contacted them several times over the past year (once by phone and once with email) but they didn’t respond.”
The Donor Sibling Registry, and many former Fairfax Cryobank/Cryogenic Laboratories (CLI) Sperm Donors would like to request that you release donor numbers to all those donors requesting to know their own donor numbers. We have many former sperm donors who have come to the Donor Sibling Registry wishing to make mutual consent contact with their offspring. Because you continue to refuse to give these men their donor numbers, making contact continues to be difficult. Some of these former donors wish to share medical and genetic information with the families who used their sperm. You are then prohibiting them from making connections that are desired by all parties, as well as prohibiting the sharing of important medical and genetic information.
We ask you publicly to please consider the ethics and potential medical ramifications of keeping donors’ numbers from them. By refusing to return phone calls, respond to their email requests and by refusing to give them their own donor numbers, you are thereby prohibiting them from sharing and updating medical and genetic information. Please consider the negative affects of deliberately keeping donors from making mutual consent contact with the families that used their sperm and the offspring that desperately want to know their biological fathers, their ancestry, and their medical backgrounds. For some of these families- the sharing and updating of medical information is critical.
Wendy