The Australian state of Victoria has set up a gamete donor register. The register will be voluntary and will include information on donors of genetic material, and the resulting children. The register is thought to be the first of its kind in the world, and will allow the offspring of donated sperm, eggs or embryos to contact their donors. For the first time, children under the age of 18 will be able to get in touch with their donor 'parent'. But the voluntary register will only take applications from children born from donated gametes or embryos since 1988.
The Victoria Infertility Treatment Authority (ITA) will oversee the programme, in which donors would be able to apply to have different levels of information about them made available to donor offspring. Helen Szoke of the ITA said that 'they can apply to put in a name, they can apply to say they want to meet their genetic counterpart, they can send in a photo. It has a much higher level of flexibility.'
Supporters of the new register say that they will campaign to have similar registers in all states and territories of Australia. But some groups have said that the majority of parents who conceive using donated gametes would not be interested in applying to join the register. Dr Douglas Keeping of the Queensland Fertility Group said that many parents do not tell their children how they were conceived, others do not want contact with the donor and that a voluntary register would probably do little to change this.
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Victoria sets up sperm donor register
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