BlackIce

I frequent many places on the internet, and a friend of mine from one of these places had a sperm bank mixup, heres the jist of it:

I'm a father by the most ****ed up circumstances possible.

As some of you know, I went through chemotherapy for non-hodgkins b-cell lymphoma a couple of years ago.

One of the side effects of chemo is the possibility of making the patient sterile. To combat this, before my treatment started I had to go to a sperm donation clinic and have them save two samples of my seed for possible later use, if I wanted kids. The samples only stay good for ten years, so if I had become sterile, and wanted children of my own genetic material, I would have had to have them by the time I am 25. Which would have been odd. And I could only have two, which is a little sad.

Thankfully, though, I am not sterile. After my chemo I went back for tests and they said the sample I gave them was full of swimmers. Hooray!

So the following week I went to get a document notarized stating that I approved the destruction of my tissue. Pretty simple.

Except for the call I got this morning.

It was the clinic. They told me that a woman had come in and wanted to the identity of the donor she had used to create her now 18-month-old child. That was fine with the clinic, because whatever donor she had used had not opted to remain anonymous.

They keep the DNA record of every man who donates there, just for filing purposes and records. They had my DNA record even though they didn't have my tissue, just because it had never been deleted.

So the clinic told the woman who her donor was, and for assurances, they matched the baby's DNA to that of the donor.

It didn't match.

So they ran a search, and it matched mine.

Apparently there was a clerical or filing error, and my samples were put in the wrong place, or something. I don't really know, because I don't know exactly how that place works, and I only talked to the woman on the phone for about ten minutes. Long enough for her to explain to me most of what I've said here. She told me that I could contact the woman if I like, but that the choice is totally up to me, and that I have absolutely zero responsibility for the baby in the eyes of the law.

I have no idea what to do.



What are his options here? Can he sue the sperm bank for this? I dont even know what to begin to tell him.

Then I wonder is suing even worth it. I mean that bank could probably use the money more than he can, and how do you place value on a mistake like this? He has a child by someone whom he's never even met or anything without his consent...its crazy