“The USDA mandates that for every calf born from artificial insemination there’s a record,” Wendy Kramer, the cofounder of the Donor Sibling Registry, told me. “But not for humans. That’s insane.”

Kramer and her ex-husband obtained sperm from California Cryobank, the United States’ largest such firm. (It even offers a “look-alike” service comparing donors to celebrities, if that’s desired.) Their son Ryan was born in 1990. “By the time [Ryan] was six, he was looking at me saying, ‘I want to know who my biological father is,’ ” Kramer said. “I’m thinking, Well, of course, you do.” Ten years later, she started a Yahoo! Group, which became a website that met a worldwide demand: By early 2025 they’d connected over 27,000 people with their half-siblings or biological parents in over 40 countries. “It’s really detrimental for any human to be kept from their ancestry,” Kramer said. If for no other reason, they would benefit from knowing their family medical history.

Thanks to Kramer, cofounder of the Donor Sibling Registry, I was able to convene a family reunion of sorts this past November, on the day before Thanksgiving. Six half-siblings Zoomed into my office. Their ages ranged from 28 to 31. They grew up in different households and lived in different parts of the country. The main thing they had in common was Donor 2053, a.k.a. Todd Whitehurst.

A growing coalition of donors, donor-conceived people, and recipient parents are fighting for change in an industry wrought with ethical issues.
 

The bond between siblings is too important to not be explicitly recognised as a human right. The law needs to recognise the right of siblings to stay together, reunite if they’re separated, and identify and connect with each other in the case of genetically-related siblings raised in different families.

Canada has been slow to end anonymous paternity, but cheap and easy genetic testing makes staying unknown all but impossible.

Kramer, who still runs the Donor Sibling Registry — it now has more than 92,000 members —  isn’t impressed with the promise of revealing information when a child turns 18. She believes that making kids wait is harmful. “Nowhere ever in history, anywhere on the planet,” says Kramer, “has anyone deemed it in a human being’s best interest to be kept from their close genetic relatives for the first 18 years of their life.”

"It is the first law of its kind in the U.S. Australia and a number of European countries already prohibit anonymous sperm and egg donations, giving donor-conceived people access to more information about their identities and family histories."
 
This is inaccurate as those donor-conceived people are conceived with US and Danish donors. (As their donor pools dried up, eg. in Australia, Canada, and the UK.) So no, DCP in those countries do not "have access to more information about their identities and family histories." They're in the same position as everyone else conceived with US and Danish sperm. 

Wendy Kramer, director and co-founder of the Donor Sibling Registry, disagrees. “[O]ur research paints a different picture. In our first published study of 155 egg donors, we found that 30.3% reported Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome (OHSS),” she previously wrote. “In our second survey of 176 egg donors in 2014, we found that 32.4% of egg donors reported complications such as OHSS and infection. In our third Study of 363 egg donors in 2021, 22.4% reported experiencing OHSS.”

Wendy Kramer is working to change that. Her son, Ryan, was conceived with donor sperm and born in 1990. She was honest with him about his conception from an early age. When Ryan was about 6 years old, he asked to meet his biological father. The sperm bank wouldn’t share any information. So around 2000, Kramer started to connect with other people like her and Ryan to create The Donor Sibling Registry, a nonprofit organization that has enabled more than 25,000 half-siblings and/or their donors to meet to date (including many of Greene’s donor-conceived children). 

In 2005, Kramer’s son took a DNA test, which led mother and son to seek out and build a relationship with his biological father. To date, Wendy and Ryan Kramer have also identified 28 half-brothers and sisters. Kramer says that many of those siblings weren’t told by their parents that they were donor-conceived and were caught off-guard when they learned the truth through genetic testing. “You get families that are imploding. Kids who are struggling. Trauma,” she says. “Some of [Ryan’s] half-siblings thought it was a prank. They deleted the emails from the half-siblings saying, ‘Someone’s pranking people in 23andMe. My parents didn’t use a donor.’” 

Kramer recommends that donor parents tell their kids the truth before the child can even speak, and that sperm banks should enable connections at any age. Just as openness has risen around adoption, she’d like to see that happen with donor conception. “Then it’s just a part of their story to be proud of,” she says.

Finding lots of siblings is common and a result of a lack of donor limitations, co-founder says
Wendy Kramer is a co-founder and director of the Donor Sibling Registry, a Colorado organization that helps people conceived via sperm, egg, or embryo donation find relatives. It happens every day through her organization, she said.

She has been connecting people from Siperko’s group for decades, including 38 of Siperko’s siblings. Altogether, the group has connected nearly 25,000 people with their half-siblings and biological parents.

And while some people are happy to find so many siblings, there is still an underlying issue she wants to see addressed: a lack of limitations on donating sperm.

Many sperm banks initially promised that each donor would result in no more than 10 kids, Kramer said, but − evidenced by Siperko's case − that obviously didn't happen. 

What sperm banks are missing, Kramer said, is "accurate record-keeping on the children born."

“That's why we have so many half-sibling groups over 100 and even over 200," she told USA TODAY. "Those groups just keep growing.”

“We all came to understand that that was a complete lie and they still lie about it,” she said, noting that in some cases, people find out they have more than 200 siblings.

Large sperm banks also ship sperm to clinics across the country and sometimes worldwide, she said.

Her organization has asked donors and parents of donor-conceived people what they think the limit should be and the most common number they hear is 10. 

She said it’s unethical and irresponsible for the reproductive medicine industry to create so many half-siblings groups without updating families on medical information and limiting the number of births there are from each donor.

Part of the problem, she said, is that companies need to do a better job at keeping track of births. They aren’t always reported and record-keeping isn’t as precise as it should be.

“It's just about a profit for selling sperm with no thought whatsoever given to the human beings they're helping to create,” Kramer said. 

“I used California Cryobank and my son has … half-siblings coast to coast, up and down, even in Puerto Rico,” she said. “You never know where your half-siblings can be.”

What's it like to discover siblings?
How people respond when they find out they have so many siblings depends largely on the person, said Kramer. For introverts, finding out about lots of siblings could be “scarier” than it is for extroverts, she said. It’s deeply personal and there’s no telling how incorporating new people into your life will go.

But according to Kramer, there are many benefits to finding one’s siblings as well, including both medical and psychological. 

“It's an innate human desire to want to know where we come from and who we come from,” she told USA TODAY. “Allowing donor-conceived people to know about their ancestry, their close genetic relatives and their family medical history is crucial.”

Thirty-eight of them actually found each other on the Donor Sibling Registry! 

There are some key differences between the experiences of adopted and donor-conceived kids, but one thing remains the same: They should know about their origins.

SiriusXM radio interviews with the Perri Peltz Show and the Karen Hunter Show. 
Here's a link to the full Perri Peltz episode. It will take you directly to the episode on the SiriusXM Ap. You'll need a SiriusXM subscription to listen. 

But the US sperm-donation industry “is largely unethical and irresponsible,” according to Wendy Kramer, an American author and advocate who has been fighting for the rights of donor-conceived children for more than twenty years. Most US sperm banks promise donor anonymity, making it difficult for families who use the service to learn about health developments in their donor that may be genetic or to know about other children conceived from that donor’s sperm. Kramer, who has written extensively about the problems of donor anonymity and advocates for more medical screening, says that, with insufficient oversight and regulation of the sperm-donor industry, “money is put before the well-being of the children being born.”
 
In 2000, along with her son, Ryan, Kramer co-founded the Donor Sibling Registry, an organization that helps donor-conceived people track down their donors and half siblings. (The process ensures the donor and siblings agree to be contacted.) The organization has since helped more than 25,000 people in more than 100 countries contact their biological families and has allowed Ryan to contact some of his half siblings.

He was also able to find his donor through DNA testing and publicly available information. “If we had not met my son’s biological father, we would not have known about some pretty serious medical issues,” Kramer says. Now Ryan and his half siblings can watch out for signs and get annual screenings for inherited health conditions.

Episode 66 of Fertility Cafe is out, now! Listen on Apple or Spotify to hear Wendy Kramer and founder of Family Inceptions Eloise Drane, discuss anonymity in the fertility world.

Watch DSR co-founder Ryan with his half-sister Jami.

New podcast: Starting the Donor Sibling Registry and the Family We Gained Along the Way. Featuring Wendy Kramer

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/ 4kcFN4hZwNC2lIYJTdpdPg
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/... /fruitful.../id1610003724

Today we had the incredible experience of meeting Wendy Kramer, the Co-Founder and Director of the Donor Sibling Registry. Wendy shares her personal journey to becoming a single parent to her donor-conceived son, Ryan, and why they decided to found the DSR together in 2000.  Wendy explains how the Registry works (it’s so easy!) and the importance of ensuring that donors and parents have access to one another. SHE reminds us that there is no such thing as anonymity so honesty and openness with our children are always best. Have a listen, reach out with questions, and stay tuned for many more webinars to come featuring Wendy and her family! 

New documentary: The culminating product of First Colonial's Legal Studies Academy senior project of Cam Dunkerly. This documentary highlights the lack of regulation and legislation in the anonymous sperm donation industry. We hear from Cam's siblings and his donor. Featuring an interview with The Donor Sibling Registry founder Wendy Kramer!

In May of 2020, Laura and Dave Gunner received the worst news parents can get: their son, Steven, had died of an accidental opioid overdose. He was 27. While the Gunners were devastated, as you can imagine, they had little idea that more heartbreak was on the way.

After Steven’s death, the Gunners activated an account at the Donor Sibling Registry, a non-profit that connects sperm and egg donors with donor-conceived individuals and families. Since Steven was conceived with donated sperm from Fairfax Cryobank’s donor 1558 and his mother’s egg, they hoped they might catch a glimpse of him in some of his donor siblings. They also felt an obligation to inform other parents and donor siblings that Steven, whom they loved with all their heart, had suffered from schizophrenia. As such, he was prone to addictions and erratic behavior and had been hospitalized on numerous occasions for mental health emergencies. 

The NY Times ethicist advises a mom of a donor-conceived child who is struggling with the idea of allowing her daughter to grow up knowing her half-siblings. From the mom:
"It feels like an invasion of privacy to share her information with the donor half siblings’ families (or others), even if these sites are private and seem an unlikely hacking target. But it’s hard to know at what age I should consider her “competent” to decide for herself about making contact. Furthermore, I imagine that it would be much easier to normalize the unusual situation of having so many biological half-siblings with whom she has no other familial connection if she grows up knowing at least some of them as actual people, even if solely via photos, emails, and video chats. While I would probably benefit from connecting with the other donor families, many of whom are also single mothers by choice, my primary concern is what’s best for my daughter. What are the ethical considerations of sharing her identity and some personal information with “strangers” who are also the families of her genetic “relatives” before she can have a say?"

COLUMBUS, Ohio — McKenzie Cooper remembers being roughly 12 years old and sitting atop the school monkey bars, as the ‘cool kids’ did, and explaining how artificial insemination works.

“It’s been a very normal part of my life, a very normal part of my childhood,” she said. After all, she grew up with two moms. As she puts it, the math would not have added up if a sperm donor were not involved.
 
But it wasn’t until high school when her journey of sibling discovery truly began. After an Oprah episode, she says her mom signed her up for the Donor Sibling Registry, and soon after, she found her first two half-siblings.

“You’re playing Russian roulette with this,” says Cassandra Bach, a fertility coach and mother of a donor-conceived child. When she decided to get pregnant on her own via a sperm bank donor in 2010, she was told that sperm from the donor she chose wouldn’t be given to more than 40 families. But when her daughter was 2 years old, Bach joined the Donor Sibling Registry (DSR), a nonprofit that helps connect donor-conceived people with biological relatives (many parents join so there’s no chance of their child dating an unknown half-sibling). Over time, she discovered her daughter had 114 half-siblings spanning four countries on three continents. “The sperm bank was tracking siblings via self-reporting, and not everyone reports when they’ve had a child,” says Bach.

These are the reasons the industry needs massive reform, says Wendy Kramer, director and cofounder of DSR. Many parents of donor-conceived children are pushing for mandatory background checks on donors, as well as mandatory reporting about where else they’re donating and accurate tracking of the number of children created by donors. Clinics “need to enforce reporting from donors if their health history has changed,” says Kramer. “Many of the people who donate to these banks are 19-year-old kids, so you’re getting a snapshot of one day in the life of a healthy young person. His father could die of a heart attack the next year, or he could develop cancer later in life, and you wouldn’t know.” She’s been pushing for change for years now, but progress has been slow. “The thing is, it costs money to keep accurate records and to do proper vetting,” says Kramer.

One long-touted pro of using a sperm bank was the promise of donor anonymity. But the idea isn’t realistic anymore with at-home DNA testing kits, and, some experts argue, total anonymity is harmful for donor-conceived people anyway. In fact, 94 percent of donor-conceived people strongly support the option to access info about how many siblings they have and the identity of their donor, and 99 percent want details about the medical history of their donor, per a recent survey. “Kids will ideally find out they are donor-conceived early in life, or they will find out later through a DNA test or family member,” says Kramer. “Either way, they’ll have questions and may want to make contact, and all parties should understand and be open to that.”

I write to echo the sentiments of Steve Inskeep’s moving article about the rights of adoptees to their birth and genetic information, and to make the same argument for donor-conceived people. What Mr. Inskeep writes of adoptees is equally true of donor-conceived people, who equally deserve access to information about their identity and genetics.

As a donor-conceived person, I particularly relate to Mr. Inskeep’s point that he was never able to tell a doctor his family medical history when asked. Donor-conceived persons in the United States have no way to obtain comprehensive information about their genetic background, and when they are given information it is only as accurate as the donors themselves were when providing the information.

Donor anonymity and a lack of comprehensive and accurate record-keeping have deprived donor-conceived people of access to their identifying information for too long. We need to do better for adoptees and the donor-conceived communities. Thank you, Mr. Inskeep, for shedding light on this important issue.

Molly McCafferty
Orinda, Calif.
The writer serves on the board of directors of the Donor Sibling Registry, a nonprofit organization that connects and supports donor families.

Championing the Donor-Conceived Community  

This week Kallie sits down with Wendy Kramer, Co-Founder and Director of the Donor Sibling Registry (DSR), a network of over 72,000 members worldwide, united by their shared experience as individuals conceived as a result of egg, sperm, or embryo donation and their mutual desire to be connected with others who share their genetic ties.

Wendy launched the DSR in an effort to help bridge some of the ancestral gaps for her own son Ryan, who was conceived via sperm donation. A prolific speaker and writer, Wendy is a tireless advocate for the donor-conceived community and a strong proponent of regulations that prioritize the needs of the children born of third-party reproductive arrangements.

Besides health concerns, there is another important reason for limiting donor’s fecundity. The children of sperm and egg donors, like those who are adopted, often want to trace their blood relations. But it is difficult to forge strong relationships when vast numbers of children are involved. Wendy Kramer of the Donor Sibling Registry, which helps connect members of donor families, says this is an example of how the contract between clinics and would-be parents has ignored the interests of the children it produces. She established the group in 2000 when her then ten-year-old son, conceived using donor sperm, became curious about his wider family. Last month he learned of the existence of two new half-siblings, bringing the tally to 22. Ms Kramer had been told her sperm donor would father no more than ten children, a limit she considers sensible.

Every year, in the UK, about 2,700 people have treatment with the help of a donor, according to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. And yet the UK’s Donor Conception Network (DCN), the UK’s main support organisation, says it has known only “a handful” of cases where British families are in contact from early in the child’s life. The 70,000 members of the Donor Sibling Registry come from 135 countries, and include about 1,000 UK families. “We created the DSR so parents, donors and offspring could make mutual consent contact,” says founder Wendy Kramer, herself the mother of a donor-conceived son. “And there are many good reasons – medical and psychological – to connect while children are young.” Sperm banks, Kramer says, can’t be relied on to notify recipient families about medical issues, which could be vital information for offspring. She adds: “It’s also an innate human desire to want to know where and who we come from; it helps with identity formation.”

One man, hundreds of children, and a burning question: Why?
 

"Oli Benjamin knew from an early age that he had come into the world a little differently to most of his friends. His two mothers conceived him with a sperm donor from California in the late 1990s." (PDF)

"The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday decided claims that a sperm donor lied about his mental and criminal history led to damages in line with consumer fraud, but that 'life itself can never be an injury.'" (PDF)

"He fathered at least 36 children, but the parents didn't know he had no education and a history of hereditary mental illness." (PDF)

DNA tests are cheap and ubiquitous. For some donor-conceived people, they can unearth long-buried truths about their ancestry — and lead to unorthodox reunions. (PDF)

Fifteen years ago, a boy finding his anonymous sperm donor was a sensation. Now it's commonplace. (PDF)

Despite what sperm banks tell parents, a single sperm donor's sperm can be handed out to scores of different families, sometimes resulting in hundreds of offspring. One fear is that these offspring will meet, be drawn to each other, and develop relationships without knowing they are half-siblings. (PDF)

With little regulation in the sperm bank industry, stories of mistakes and sloppy record-keeping are growing. It’s blowing up the lives of donor-conceived children. (PDF)

A Georgia sperm bank claims no accountability for selling sperm of man with a criminal history and a diagnosis of bi-polar with schizo-affective disorder. In the end, Nahmias summed up the debate asking, “just to be clear, what you’re asserting, a sperm bank can completely misrepresent everything about the sperm itself and charge whatever amount of money based on those representations and completely lie to every customer it has - and nobody can do a thing about it?” Xytex response was under the law, yes. That’s why 38 law professors from across the United States filed their own legal analysis with the court asking justices to allow the Normans’ lawsuit, and others like it, to go to trial. In the brief, written by Georgia State University College of Law Professor Timothy Lytton, they argue, “exposing sperm banks to liability will give them a powerful incentive to exercise reasonable care in vetting donors and providing accurate information to their clients.” (PDF)

'Life-changing' sperm donor registry has connected 18,250 people with genetic relatives. (PDF)

"Days after my son was born, I was shuffling through our apartment in my postpartum uniform of mesh underwear, a fleece-lined flannel robe and slippers, when my wife, Sam, called me over to the kitchen table. 'Look at this,' she said, turning her laptop toward me. I blinked away my exhaustion as the screen came into focus. Sam had received an invitation to join a Facebook group for families connected by one thing: the shared genes of a 6-foot-2, blue-eyed collegiate soccer player. Our sperm donor." (PDF)

Tales of sperm banks and donor-related families usually focus on the kids or the donor himself. But what about the mothers? (PDF)

"The Donor Sibling Registry connects families who use the same donor, so I’ve known about most of my half-siblings since I was two. We all live in different places, but we keep in touch over social media and in a group chat. Last January, things changed for our group. The genetic testing site 23andMe matched some of us with Donor 893." (PDF)

See the associated September 2019 Washington Post article: The children of Donor H898. "The boys are part of an autism cluster involving at least a dozen children scattered across the United States, Canada, and Europe, all conceived with sperm from the same donor. Many of the children have secondary diagnoses of ADHD, dyslexia, mood disorders, epilepsy and other developmental and learning disabilities." Read the associated lawsuit. Read the Above the Law article: Sperm Donor Linked To Autism Cluster — Scientifically Fascinating, Legally Complicated. See the CBS Chicago story: Single Sperm Donor Linked To Numerous Children With Autism, Other Disabilities.

"All Ryan Kramer had to do was to swab his cheek and embark on nine days of geneological research to identify his biological father, a man who thought he would remain anonymous when he donated his sperm and never took a DNA test himself. The year was 2005, when consumer DNA tests were in their infancy. Kramer was 15. Thirteen years later, the explosion of individual DNA test kits has opened the floodgates for people who were born from sperm or egg donations. Increasing numbers of people are using the technology to uncover the identities of their donors."

"Xytex will never have to answer questions in court regarding its decision to sell the sperm of a donor the company would later learn had a criminal record and severe mental health problems." One of the parents explains the case.

"With no regulated tracking system in Canada, donor-conceived kids turn to private U.S. registry."

(Direct link to the Tennessean article)

"Kacie Saxer-Taulbee, 19, was searching for her sperm-donor father. What she discovered was a huge extended family."

(Direct link to NBC News article)

"A Canadian couple is suing a Georgia sperm bank [Xytex], alleging that the donor the company provided for them is a schizophrenic with a criminal past whose photo was doctored to make him look more attractive."

(See Part 6 for links to Parts 1-5 of this story.)

Midwest Sperm Bank sells wrong sperm.

A teenager and her parents meet their egg donor and her two daughters for the first time! (See the full show on the DSR's Video Library page.) Very emotional and shows how important these connections can be — for all involved. Read the story in the June 5, 2014, Tennessean: Nashville teen finds her egg donor mom

(written by a DSR mom)

The compelling 6-part docu-drama Generation Cryo explored the issues faced by a new generation of kids coming of age who were conceived via anonymous sperm donors and are redefining what it means to be a family. The series documented the journey of Breeanna, a 17-year-old only child, who logged on to the Donor Sibling Registry and learned that she has at least 15 half-siblings all fathered by a man none of them know. Follow Bree’s mission to meet all of her half-brothers and sisters and their nationwide search to find their biological father. This show got stellar reviews!

Some rough cuts and out-takes from Generation Cryo:

• Daily Beast
• Slate Magazine
• NY Times
• Associated Press
• Reno Gazette-Journal
• Hollywood Reporter
• Channel Guide Magazine
• A great review in the November 4, 2013, Variety Magazine!
• The Futon Critic
• The Wrap
• MTV Remote Control Blog
• NY Post
• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.com
• Denver Post
• CRYOKIDS_FINE_CUT_ACTS_1_2.mov
• CRYOKIDS_FINE_CUT_ACTS_3_4.mov
• CRYOKIDS_FINE_CUT_ACTS_5_6_w_SEASON_ON.mov
• CRYOKIDS_SEASON_ON.mp4

(PDF)

(PDF)

Ryan Kramer's biological father speaks publicly for the first time about being found through DNA testing.

Richard Hatch connects with two offspring on the DSR.

(PDF)

"One sperm donor, two grandparents, two toddlers and an exboyfriend/nanny/uncle. How one single mother redefined 'family.'"

(Also watch the video version)

"America is the largest exporter of sperm. But what happens when all those kids grow up and decide to go looking for Daddy?"

(PDF)

Wendy Kramer and Sean Tipton of the ASRM.

Siblings via Sperm Donor Meet for the First Time and What If You Discovered You Had 150 Siblings?

(Sorry, link is broken)

(Sorry, link is broken)

(Interview with Wendy Kramer)

(PDF)

(Sorry, link is broken)

(PDF)

(PDF)

(Audio)

(Sorry, no link)

(Sorry, no link)

(Sorry, no link)

(German pdf)

(Sorry, link is broken)

cover, page 138, page 139, page 140, page 141, page 142, page 143, page 216

(Audio)

(Sorry, link is broken)

[Please note: Ryan Kramer had not met nine half-siblings. The reporter was a little confused!]