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This article draws on three recent studies¹ of the views of people conceived following donor insemination and supports recent calls for a change in UK law to allow people born as a result of donor conception to learn more about their genetic origins.²

The studies by Turner and Coyle, and Hewitt draw on an international network of donor-conceived children and adults, most of whom have discovered the truth of their origins comparatively late in life or in unplanned or less than ideal circumstances or both. Most of these people had little information about their donor and were unlikely ever to learn his identity.

The third study, in contrast, studied the experiences of young people aged between 12 and 17 who had been told about their origins at a young age and are in a position to learn the identity of their donor.

These studies provide evidence that:

• Donor-conceived children can be informed about their origins in sensitive and age-appropriate ways without damaging family relationships.
• People learning earlier about their origins are able to accommodate this information more readily than those told later. Those told later often wish they had been informed earlier - and frequently comment on feeling that information had been withheld from them and that they had an awareness of "difference" about themselves and their families.
• Appropriate disclosure is not a one-off event, but a process developing over time.
• Inadvertent or poorly-managed disclosure may generate negative feelings about the concealment of this information and may damage family relationships.
• Lack of information about the donor leads to frustration and identity problems for many donor-conceived people and may be a barrier to some parents being open since they feel ill-prepared for any further questions that may be generated by disclosure. Some donor-conceived people consider that only knowledge of the donor's identity will help them to make sense of their own identity and that this information is their fundamental civil right.
• Most donor-conceived people who are able to discover the donor's identity indicate an interest in doing so, but they are not interested in knowing their donor as a substitute parent nor with a view to making financial or emotional demands on him.
• An individual donor may have contributed to the creation of more than one donor-conceived child and may also have a child or children of his or her own. Some donor-conceived people have indicated a wish to identify and locate any siblings they may have.

The parallels between the experiences of donor-conceived people and adopted people denied information about their genetic origins are self-evident. At present, UK law protects donor anonymity, and consequently prevents the identification of other genetic relatives. The government is considering whether this law should be changed. While there are unsubstantiated claims that the identification of donors might jeopardise the supply of sperm for donation, the evidence from donor-conceived people is that such pragmatic considerations, even if they were to be substantiated, should not be allowed to trump the case for disclosure and truth.

Eric Blyth is professor of social work at the University of Huddersfield.

¹ AJ Turner and A Coyle, "What does it mean to be a donor offspring? The identity experiences of adults conceived by donor insemination", Human Reproduction, Vol 15 (9), 2000; G Hewitt, Missing Links, unpublished personal interest project, East Hills Girls Technology High School, Sydney, 2001; Sperm Bank of California, "Identity-release research", Newsletter, Vol vii (3), 2001.

² See J Feast, "Misconceived secrecy", Community Care 4-10 July, 2002