A Dutch man suspected of fathering more than 550 children worldwide through sperm donations has been ordered to stop.
The man named Jonathan, aged 41, could be fined more than €100,000 (£88,000) if he tries to donate again. He was banned from donating to fertility clinics in the Netherlands in 2017 after it emerged he had fathered more than 100 children. But instead of stopping he carried on donating sperm abroad and online.
Dutch clinical guidelines state that a donor should not father more than 25 children in 12 families. The man was said to have misled hundreds of women. Judges said the man had helped produce between 550 and 600 children since he began donating sperm in 2007.
The donor “deliberately misinformed” prospective parents about the number of children he had already fathered in the past, the district court in The Hague said.
“All these parents are now confronted with the fact that the children in their family are part of a huge kinship network, with hundreds of half-siblings, which they did not choose,” it said.
The court said it was “sufficiently plausible” that this has or could have negative psychosocial consequences for the children.
Sperm donors are told to limit the number of times they offer their services, to reduce the chance that siblings might unknowingly form a couple and have children together.
The Netherlands has been hit by fertility scandals in the past.
(BIB) Blimey … that’s appalling … I’d never thought about the consequences … 
