Major investigation reveals sperm donor who fathered nearly 200 kids had cancer-causing gene

A sperm donor who carried a genetic mutation known for substantially increasing the risk of developing cancer has fathered 197 children across Europe.

A major investigation has found that some of the children have already died and only a small portion of those who have inherited the mutation will avoid cancer during their lifetime.

The alarm was raised by doctors who had been seeing children with cancer linked to sperm donation and raised concerns with Europe’s human genetics society.

Though it is unknown how many children inherited the mutation, an initial report found that of 67 children known to be fathered by the donor, 23 carried the dangerous variant.

Edwige Kasper, a cancer geneticist from France, confirmed that some of the children had already died.

“We have many children that have already developed a cancer,” Dr Kasper said.

“We have some children that have developed already two different cancers and some of them have already died at a very early age.”

The sperm was sold by Denmark’s European Sperm Bank to 67 fertility clinics in 14 countries including Germany, France, Spain, Ireland, Greece, and Iceland.

According to the BBC, the provider has since admitted the sperm was used to make too many babies in some countries and has offered affected families its “deepest sympathy”.

The investigation was carried out by 14 public service broadcasters across Europe and the UK, and found the sperm came from an anonymous donor who was paid to donate starting in 2005 while he was studying.

He had passed the necessary screening checks and his sperm was used by women for approximately 17 years.

Some of his cells contained mutated DNA that damaged the TP53 gene which usually works to prevent the human body’s cells from becoming cancerous.

Though most of the donor’s cells don’t contain the dangerous mutation, about 20 per cent of his sperm do.

Children conceived with the affected sperm will carry the mutation in every cell of their body, which results in a 90 per cent risk of them developing cancer during their lifetime.

This significantly increased risk is known as Li Fraumeni syndrome. People with this condition are more likely to develop childhood cancers like leukaemia and breast cancer later in life.

They are also more likely to develop bone cancers and brain tumours.

Li-Fraumeni syndrome is the same condition that affected Perth’s Milli Lucas, who was first diagnosed with a brain tumour when she was nine-years-old in 2016.

After a long battle with glioblastoma, she died in January of 2021. Her mother, Monica Smirk, sadly died in April this year after developing cancer for a fourth time.

Including Milli and her mother, seven people in their family have been diagnosed with cancer.

Though the sperm was not sold in UK clinics, some families from there were still affected because they had travelled to Denmark to receive fertility treatment using the donor’s sperm.

The BBC said they chose not to identify the sperm donor because he had donated in good faith and the known cases in the UK had been contacted already.

There are no universal limits on how many times a donor’s sperm can be used, but different countries set their own limits.

In the case of the affected donor’s sperm, the European Sperm Bank acknowledged that the limits had “unfortunately” been breached in some countries.

Allan Pacey, a former sperm bank director and current deputy vice president of biology medicine and health at the University of Manchester, said there is a gap in international law.

“We have to import from big international sperm banks who are also selling it to other countries, because that’s how they make their money, and that is where the problem begins, because there’s no international law about how often you can use the sperm,” Professor Pacey said.

“You can’t screen for everything, we only accept 1 per cent or 2 per cent of all men that apply to be a sperm donor in the current screening arrangement so if we make it even tighter, we wouldn’t have any sperm donors – that’s where the balance lies.”