Fears of inbreeding as 85 ‘mass sperm donors’ father thousands

At least 85 men have used a loophole in Dutch law to become ‘mass’ sperm donors in the past 20 years. Current limits are intended to prevent inbreeding, incest or psychological problems for offspring.

Men who have fathered more than 25 children through sperm donation have become a scandal in The Netherlands. Above, how a container of ejaculate for sperm donation looks. Picture: iStock

At least 85 men have used a loophole in Dutch law to become “mass” sperm donors over the past 20 years, the country’s gynaecologists have admitted.

These are men who have fathered more than 25 children through sperm donation, an issue that first came to prominence through the Dutch YouTuber Jonathan Meijer, who fathered at least 550 children and possibly as many as 1000.

“The number of mass donors in the clinics should have been zero,” said Marieke Schoonenberg, head of the professional association of gynaecologists (NVOG), after an investigation by NOS, the public broadcaster.

“We want to offer our apologies on behalf of the profession. We did not do it right.”

The Meijer scandal two years ago led to legal changes. Since April 1 this year, tightened legislation has been in place that means donors and mothers have been registered on a central national database, instead of per clinic. This applies retroactively to 2004.

“We now know for the first time the number of offspring per donor in the Netherlands,” Schoonenberg said, adding that most cases of mass donation involved “26 to 40 children per person, with a few outliers going up to 50 or even 75 children per donor”.

Until 2018, the maximum number of children allowed per donor according to the NVOG guidelines was 25, which then changed to 12.

The laws are intended to prevent inbreeding, unintentional incest or psychological problems for offspring who discover they have hundreds of unknown siblings.

A central register came into force in 2023 after judges ordered Mr Meijer to stop donating sperm when he was found to be in breach of Dutch regulations.

Until then, donors were able to register with multiple clinics. Some clinics, it has emerged, were deliberately using individuals more than 25 times, without consent of the donor or the mothers.

Mr Meijer, from The Hague and now living in Africa, donated sperm to at least 13 clinics, including 11 in the Netherlands, as well as approaching prospective parents via social media.

Earlier this year he was forced by Dutch judges to remove YouTube videos in which he sought to address his offspring, including advice to eat pig brains, to become a traditional stay-at-home housewife and not to use shampoo.

A 3D rendering of intracytoplasmic sperm injection, a process in which a single sperm is injected directly into an egg. Picture: iStock

In a case from 2013, another Dutchman, Ed Houben, who abandoned his plan to become a monk to instead be a sperm donor, fathered more than 120 children. In 2017 it emerged that a hospital in Arnhem was using 15 sperm donors who had all fathered an average of 36 children.

Ties van der Meer, of the donor child foundation Stichting Donorkind, expressed anger at the figure, which revealed that clinics “facilitated mass donation”.

He described the scandal as “a medical calamity” that will blight the lives of thousands of people.

“The donor children involved can never date without worries,” he said. “If they get into a relationship, they’ll always have to do a DNA test to rule out that they are involved with a family member.”

The Times