More than half of donor sperm used in Netherlands came from commercial clinics abroad

Over half of the door sperm used in the Netherlands comes from commercial foreign sperm clinics, De Volkskrant reports based on its analysis of the annual reports from Trip, the agency that monitors the processing of human cells. The gynecological association NVOG has some concerns about this because the same donors are used worldwide for dozens and possibly even hundreds of children, according to the newspaper.

Dutch sperm banks have lengthy waiting lists - at least two years. So, people who need a sperm donor to start or grow their family often look at other options. Commercial sperm banks abroad - especially in Denmark, where you can order sperm online from a donor of your choice - are increasingly popular.

According to the Volkskrant, foreign sperm was used in more than a third of treatments to conceive using a sperm donor in 2016. In 2021, the last year for which data is available, that had grown to 54 percent. Dutch clinics who performed the fertility treatments provided these figures to Trip. About 1,300 children per year are born via sperm donation.

The downside of the “foreign route” is that it is unclear how many children one donor fathers worldwide, Annemiek Nap, professor of gynecology and chair of the Reproductive Medicine department of the NVOG, told the Volkskrant. In the Netherlands, sperm donors can father children with up to 12 women. “But foreign sperm clinics say: we adhere to the law in every country.” So a donor can father six children in Belgium and 15 in Germany, for example. “If you add that up, such a donor can produce an unacceptably high number of offspring.”

Another issue is the anonymity. In the Netherlands, donor children have access to the identity of the man who fathered them from age 16. In principle, that also applies to foreign donors, but that data is not always available.

Within the NVOG, a consultation group has been discussing the ethical side of donor sperm, including from foreign donors, for a year now. “We hope to arrive at a joint position or advice on how we will deal with this in the future,” Nap told the newspaper.