Dutch fertility clinic investigated for deliberately exceeding donor limits with 36 men

The Health and Youth Care Inspectorate (IGJ) has launched an investigation into the fertility clinic Medisch Centrum Kinderwens (MCK) in Leiderdorp. The clinic allegedly deliberately exceeded the child limit for sperm donors, creating at least 36 men with more than 25 children, Nieuwsuur reports.

The current affairs program revealed MCK’s dodgy practices last week. In the Netherlands, sperm donors are not allowed to sire more than 25 children. Instead of complying with that limit, MCK maintained a maximum of 25 families per donor between 2006 and 2017, affecting 900 women and 1,200 children. According to Nieusuur’s investigation, mothers and donors were unaware that MCK used donors’ sperm to conceive more children than allowed.

The IGJ decided to launch the investigation after the Nieuwsuur report and receiving “several reports,” a spokesperson told the program. “The inspectorate is looking at how both the parents and the donors were informed about the treatments and how they were informed about the working methods of the clinic.”

Priamos, the association representing sperm donors, is pleased that the IGJ is investigating. The association is angry that MCK has not set the matter straight. “They first tried to blame the donors. After our protest, they said that they had chosen to limit the families. The large numbers of children that now exist per donor cannot be explained by this argument,” a spokesperson said.

The current MCK management, which took over the clinic in 2015, decided to stop the 25-family policy two years later without informing donors and parents about any of it. The clinic told Nieuwsuur that the previous management ignored the guideline due to “a shortage of donors, the high demand from prospective mothers, and the desire for multiple children from the same donor within one family.” The clinic didn’t say why the new management waited two years before complying with the guideline.

According to Priamos, the clinic’s motives weren’t nearly so benevolent. “Their working methods led to shorter waiting times compared to other clinics and therefore more customers and more profit.”

According to Stichting Donorkind, the association that represents children conceived through sperm donation, the IGJ is also to blame. “Our impression is that the inspectorate itself has been negligent for a very long time,” chairman Ties van der Meer said. “In 2016, they already investigated the recording of the number of children at all clinics in the Netherlands, including MCK. Strangely enough, this did not come to light at the time. This new investigation, therefore, does not inspire much confidence in the inspectorate’s decisiveness.”