In December, the Finnish public service channel EPN talked about a crowd of 50 siblings who got its start on one and the same clinic in Finland. The case was then unique in the country.
Now another sibling has been discovered, and all siblings except one live in Sweden. The sibling is the largest of knowledge in Sweden.
– It felt absurd in the beginning and it still does, especially when new siblings are still emerging, says Essi Miettinen, one of the total 34 siblings, to EPN.
Raises questions about infertility therapy
This with the siblings began to be redeemed in conjunction with Essi Miettinen, the only siblings living in Finland, a DNA test almost four years ago. Since then, 34 siblings have been found, the latest as late as a week ago.
Miettinen and her half -siblings are all born between 1991 and 2007 and all have the same biological father, a Finnish man.
EPN writes that the recently discovered sibling again raised questions about how infertility was treated before 2007, when a law that limited the use of the same donor to a maximum of five patients was instituted.
Before 2007, each individual fertility clinic decided on the guidelines for the treatment.
Many of the Swedish siblings’ parents should have been asked to seek fertility treatment in Finland. The reason was a law that came into force in Sweden in 1985 and which banned anonymous sperm donations. The law made the donors fewer and the queues longer.
Some of the siblings that EPN talked to believe that the opportunity to use an anonymous donor affected the parents’ decision to seek help in Finland. In addition, many of the families must have been promised that one and the same donor would only be used on a few occasions. Others were promised a completely unique donor.
“Damage has been done”
EPN has been in contact with the doctor who ran the current, now closed fertility clinic. He denies that he would intentionally have used the same donor for over 30 children and claims that in addition to his own sperm bank he has taken in sperm donations from the sperm banks of the population association and Turku.
The Finnish donor has not wanted to put up an interview with EPN. The doctor, on the other hand, has stated that the donor should have donated semen to several clinics. Which could explain that his germ cells were used for so many donations.
That the responsibility to investigate the healing of the fertility ended up with the siblings considers them wrong.
– I think injury has happened. The responsibility should be with the clinic that distributes semen. They should know whose semen it is about, says Louise Askling from Stockholm, to EPN.