Withdrawal of consent by sperm donors

Since 1991, sperm donors in the UK have had the legal right to withdraw consent for the use of their sperm in fertility treatment. This has the potential to adversely affect patients. It may mean that previous recipients of a donor’s sperm cannot have further children who are full biological siblings to an existing child, and that embryos created from the donor’s sperm and a patient’s eggs must be destroyed. We have informally investigated withdrawal of consent by sperm donors donating after 1 April 2005, when lifelong anonymity for gamete donors ended. An email in November 2008 to colleagues at five UK fertility centres asked if recipients knew of cases where a sperm donor had withdrawn consent after his sperm had been released for use. One reported that this had happened at their centre. This was followed by an email in March 2009, kindly circulated by the Association of Clinical Embryologists, asking each recipient how many donors recruited at their centre since April 2005 had withdrawn consent after their sperm had been released for use. In response, two further centres each reported one donor who had withdrawn consent after sperm had been released, as well as several who had withdrawn after donation but before such release