Been so long since my last blog that I’m almost daunted.
Part of that is that there are about eight different blog topics I have knocking around in my head. Guess I’ll just pick one…
How about this: Thinking of a sperm donor?: Ramifications you may not have thought of. Good?
Are you sitting comfortably? Then we shall begin.
As we know, many women in our modern world are choosing to have babies on their own and opting for sperm donors and artificial insemination. So there is a demand for sperm donors. What we may not know, are some of the unusual issues that are starting to arise from this practice. There are not many regulations in place to keep track of all the babies born from one donor, so we are starting to see increasingly large groups of donor siblings. For example, The New York Times recently reported on a woman researching this, and finding 150 half siblings to her child.
While that is one of the larger groups, there are many with around 50 half siblings and often these groups are in the same geographical location.
Naturally, there is concern growing that half siblings could accidentally meet and get together and bear children of their own and, well, pretty soon things would be looking positively Graeco-Roman Egyptian. (Think Ptolemaic Dynasty). (Think Wikipedia). Even without the GRE soap-opera drama, there is a greater risk of genes for rare diseases spreading into the population more rapidly. And there is the question of psychology. What does it feel like to know that you are one of 50 siblings? What are those consequences?
Now, at first glance we may think, “Holy cow. This has never happened before! Whatever will become of us??!!” BUT. Don’t panic. Actually it has happened before. Maybe not with test tubes. But with monarchies.
There have likely been loads of monarchs who fathered, like, a gazillion children, but one in particular comes to mind. My husband and I were just listening to a podcast (can’t remember which one unfortunately). Scientists were finding the same genetic material in individuals all over Eurasia. When they traced it back, they traced it to one man in the 12th century. One man who traveled very extensively. At exactly the time when Ghengis Khan was pillaging. Actually, they think it was Ghengis Khan. He was the father that began genetic lines that to this day are widely found in various communities throughout Eurasia. Scientists studying Y-chromosome data have found that about 8 percent of the men living in the former Mongol empire carry nearly identical y-chromosomes. That’s about .5 percent of the male population OF THE WORLD, or about 16 million descendents we can find living today. Somewhere on the web I found this idea: that Genghis Khan was with so many women that there is a .5 percent chance that you are related to him.
I have no doubt there are consequences to this many-half-siblings phenomenon associated with the practice of artificial insemination, and I bring this up precisely because this is the kind of thing we might do well to consider before deciding on artificial insemination. (I also recommend reading Ch. 12 of my book, Balance Your Hormones, Balance Your Life. It goes into some other issues associated with Assisted Reproductive Technologies that are worth considering).
I don’t underestimate the gravity of the situation. Though, if I had to chose between artificial insemination and being visited by Genghis K., well, it wouldn’t be much of a choice. The violence associated with the latter is hard to fathom, compounded when we consider the scale we are talking about.
I think it is important to consider the ramifications of our choices, as best we can, and remember that there have been times of great upheaval and weirdness in other historical times as well as our own (think both Ptolemies and Genghis Khan) and, as as we consider this new world in which we find ourselves, we may do well to adopt (rather than inseminate?) a sense of perspective, if not humor and, as the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy recommends, “Don’t Panic.”☺
I loved this!
Excellent and interesting topic – and thanks for the “Wikipedia” suggestion just as I was saying to myself, “Ptolahwhat?”
Ptolahwhat was a tribe in the Zanixan outback I think….
Kudos Dr. C for picking an excellent topic to contemplate and hopefully have meaningful discussion amongst ourselves on a Friday eve. There are some very amusing songs from the Caribbean islands (i.e. Trinidad) too that address this age-old issue in many cultures. xoxox S.
Would love to hear the songs, Christine. love, cw
LOVE your writing style & sense of humor, Dr. Claudia… Great topic too. We just discussed it in my Ethics of a Healing Relationship class! : )
thanks Kelly.
happy birthday
You too, brother!
Hey there, Claudia!
This is so fascinating, thanks! I’ve been engrossed in Ancestry.com for years now, and tracing lineage is fascinating and turns up surprising things we don’t think of much. For instance, I always thought of the ethnic groups in Europe as rather distinct, i.e. the French are French, the Germans German, etc. As I traced my Dad’s dad’s line back to Alscace Lorraine and watched the border swing between France and Prussia (pre-Germany), a picture of a much more fluid and intermingling population began to arise. Should’ve noticed with both French and German in my Dad’s birth name, passed down 3 generations! On my mom’s dad’s mom’s side, her father was a love-child between an Italian and a Frenchman (or woman? hard to tell which surname he actually got) who was abandoned to be raised by monks. My great-grandmother tried to suppress the information as society likes a different story about geneology than just the plain truth, apparently. My mom’s mom died the year she was born and she got disconnected completely from that side. It’s amazing how only 2 generations out we can know so very little about our own origins (or in fact the impact of them). How many people know what year and place their grandparents were born? Surprisingly, less than you’d think! Also, it was quite common, especially amoung upper classes, all over the world, to marry their cousins, due to closeness and protection of assets and class. Although it is now a pretty taboo thought, it wasn’t thought twice of for most of human history and still goes on in many parts of the world. The more I track backwards, the more I see the population springing from less and less people, and the more clear it becomes that we are ultimately all related! A good argument for “We are all One”
I recommend the “Who Do You Think You Are?” series, you can watch it on Hulu- a really engrossing trace of certain ancestral story lines of some famous people and the things that were passed down to them, in the context of many lost historical subjects.
Loves!
Kate
Fascinating, Kate. And timely to be talking about ancestors since we are currently in the fortnight of Pitru Paksha, which is held in remembrance of our ancestors. Thanks for sharing…
In Love, cw