
Fertility Fraud: Artificial insemination doctors who used their own sperm - turtlegrids
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/health/sperm-donors-fraud-doctors.html
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hirundo
In its long term effect this fraud is similar to serial rape. But that's also
true of serial seduction under false pretenses. Should the punishment for
these things also be similar? I don't know.

From a Darwinian perspective even the death penalty is insufficient, since
reproducing copiously is worth dying for. The only effective punishment would
involve also killing or sterilizing the resulting children ... which is
entirely unacceptable from our cultural perspective.

So to a Darwinian insemination doctor this may be something like a perfect
crime, in that there is no prospective punishment that outweighs the benefits.

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buboard
> From a Darwinian perspective even the death penalty is insufficient,

Darwinism has no bearing on legal matters. In fact the entirety of laws are
opposed to darwinism

Plus we re probably the last generations that care for darwinism? It won't
take long before it becomes normal to engineer your children.

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tarunupaday
>Darwinism has no bearing on legal matters.

While some laws are created to protect the weakest; a lot of inheritance,
marriage and family laws follow their rationale directly from Darwinism.

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staticman2
Marriage and family laws predate Darwin and have nothing to do with
"Darwinism". They are products of, in anything, human social psychology.

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philwelch
Marriage and family laws are based upon centuries-old cultural traditions that
evolved and survived to the present day by virtue of promoting their own
survival. That’s Darwinism. The fact that they predate Darwin is as
meaningless as the fact that Earth’s orbit around the sun predates Copernicus.

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knbknb
If the adult child finds out what happened, and the insemination doctor is
still alive, is the child then entitled to a part of the doctor's (future)
heritage?

Or if the child finds out when it is still small, or a teenager, will the
child be entitled for child support payments from the doctor?

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Scoundreller
For the inheritance, not if there’s a will.

But not all countries let you disinherit your children.

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Fnoord
Here in The Netherlands it is possible, but only for 50%. So if you have 3
children, and you disinherit one (which is morally defend-able under certain
circumstances) then that one gets (1/3) / 2 = 1/6 and the other two get 2/6 +
1/12 = 5/12 (or 4.5/6). In percentages that is 16,66666667% and 41,66666667%.

I find it a fair middle ground.

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lxmorj
The only way to cut out little Johnny is to have a few dozen more kids, then!

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Scoundreller
Or die broke because you gave everything away before you bit the dust.

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kuzehanka
Why is DNA testing not a mandatory part of the process? I thought embryonic
genetic testing for show-stopping diseases was one of the major selling points
of IVF. Would that not immediately set off alarm bells for paternity/maternity
mismatch?

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H8crilA
Not necessarily - you don't need parents DNA to do those tests.

Also DNA sequencing is one of those areas which experienced incredible cost
reduction, much faster than for example general computing power under Moore's
law. I.e. it used to be very very expensive. Heck, the first complete human
genome sequencing was completed just 16 years ago, and the project took 13
years.

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kuzehanka
There was a story a few weeks ago of screwup in IVF involving not-father's
sperm combined with mother's egg by accident. The resulting child is now
unwanted by the couple.

Between that story and TFA, maybe it's time for regulators to step in and
force DNA testing as early as possible in the process to positively confirm
the match. It already costs an arm and a leg, what's another few hundred
dollars to avoid creating black mirror situations.

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jobigoud
People at 23AndMe could run an anonymized query on their dataset to extract
networks of lineages and see highly connected individuals. It would be
fascinating to see some people with hundreds of offsprings because they are
sperm donors.

What if their own children become sperm donors, etc. If two persons are born
from sperm donors I imagine they have to check in case they are siblings or
closely related.

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oefrha
> run an anonymized query ... see highly connected individuals

Doesn't sound very anonymized to me.

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toomuchtodo
As the genetic sequencing graph grows, the odds of maintaining anonymity
rapidly drops to zero. Poor choice of words on parent’s part, but I think one
can understand what they were trying to convey (datamining the genotype
matrix).

Disclaimer: Interviewed at 23andme a decade ago. Good folks.

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bscphil
I think that commenter was thinking that 23andme would be able to identify
many people as children of the same unknown person, but unless that person
also submitted their DNA to the service, they would effectively be anonymous.
An unknown parent of dozens or hundreds.

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toomuchtodo
They’d only be anonymous if none of their family had used 23andme. CODIS
already supports similar familial searches.

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turtlecloud
Simple solution is to just work with a fertility doc who is female or a person
of a different race than picked sperm. Will be obvious if child is mixed.

I am worried about future ethics of DNA sequencing. Esp if lab techs are
corrupted. That will prob be the future - bastard children at scale.

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arkades
> Will be obvious if child is mixed.

You have misidentified the problem.

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sooheon
Can't imagine what it's like to find this out as the offspring. On one hand
it's a crazy violation of their very identity, on the other, they would not
exist if not for that deception.

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keiru
I've posted several times about law lagging behind technology, and this is
what I mean. If a new tech is in the horizon, you should already be able to
realize what can be done with it, what damage it can cause.

I can't believe they call it sexual assault. It's as if it was beyond the
realm of possibility to create new lexicon and they had to use only existing
terms.

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faissaloo
I mean, that's a pretty damn effective way to ensure you reproduce on a grand
scale, but I seriously question the impact it will have on the world. I'm
already against sperm donation in general partly because of how much it can
reduce genetic diversity, but I never factored this sort of rape-fraud (raud?
fraupe?) thing into it

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lota-putty
Women who received Doctor's sperm instead of

1\. Husband's sperm(low count)

2\. Healthy stranger's sperm (Stranger was chosen)

3\. Random donor's sperm

4\. ?

For 1 & 2 Doctor ought to be stripped from IVR practice, children should get
20y alimony.

Additionally, in case of 1 children should also get inheritance.

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buboard
The white lies we tell each other to make society work are coming out one at a
time. That's why france disallows paternity tests. Then again is society ready
to move beyond the nuclear family? i dont think so

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wtdata
Can you clarify your rationale about why France banned paternity tests?

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leftyted
France banned paternity tests for the sake of filation, i.e. to protect the
rights of children and to promote stable families.

I differ with the previous poster in that I don't think that many men are
unknowingly raising children that are not theirs. I've seen estimates that
vary between .6% and 5%.

I do think that a man ought to have the right to know if he's the biological
father and I think it's understandable if he wants to leave if he isn't. Yes,
familial bonds are important but what kind of family do you have if the lies
run that deep?

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bscphil
> I do think that a man ought to have the right to know if he's the biological
> father and I think it's understandable if he wants to leave if he isn't.

Yes, but I've always assume reasonable people want to know this because it
would prove infidelity by their spouse, not because they specifically care
that their child shares their genes.

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toasterlovin
Many of us have no interest whatsoever in raising other people’s children.
Infidelity is a separate, though sometimes related, issue.

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bscphil
A child that you know doesn't possess your genes but you still accept, _is_
your child. Adoption doesn't count less. If you knew the child wasn't "yours"
before the test, why would the test make a difference? If you didn't know the
child wasn't yours before the test, surely the most significant part of the
result for you is that there is some _reason_ that you didn't know before.
That is, that you had been lied to, and were in the relationship and parenting
the child under false pretenses.

I don't think that most people distinguish between a child from their own
genes with an adopted child, unless there's some falsehood in play. At least I
hope not.

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toasterlovin
You’re putting the cart before the horse. The reason people care about the
falsehood is because it results in a child which isn’t the father’s. The
reason I decided to settle down with my wife was to have children. My
children. I didn’t get married to her so I could raise someone else’s
children. I am a biological being, whose existence is the result of 3 billion
years of reproduction. I exist to perpetuate the genes which built me.

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taneq
If it was about a couple going to a doctor and the doctor replacing the man's
sperm with his own, I'd understand this, but if a woman goes to a doctor and
asks for a sample from an anonymous donor with no further stipulations then I
don't see why the donor shouldn't be the doctor. Of course, they should have
been open about it, but still.

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kuzehanka
Anonymous yes, random no, at least not that I have ever heard of. You get a
catalogue of various physical and socioeconomic traits from anonymous donors
and pick the one that you want. Replacing that with any other is certainly
fraud.

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bscphil
> You get a catalogue of various physical and socioeconomic traits from
> anonymous donors and pick the one that you want. Replacing that with any
> other is certainly fraud.

It's fraud, certainly, but the system you're describing (I'm not familiar with
it) seems to be open to abuses that are almost as unethical. Surely genetic
health is the only thing it really makes sense to take into account when
choosing a donor. Some choices (race?) seem particularly icky.

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taneq
You choose all of those things when choosing a partner for making a baby the
old-fashioned way. Why is it Ok in that case but not this one?

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bscphil
Choosing your partner with the intent of having particular genes for your
child (other than, as I said, general physical health) seems unethical to me
too. People _do_ choose their partners on the basis of particular
characteristics, but I would hope not for any reason so crass as manipulating
the genes of their future children.

