A Danish sperm donor unknowingly carried a rare TP53 gene mutation that dramatically raises cancer risk. His sperm, distributed by European Sperm Bank, fathered at least 197 children in 14 European countries, including Cyprus, over 17 years.
The mutation causes Li-Fraumeni syndrome. Children who inherit it face up to 90% lifetime cancer risk, including childhood leukaemia, brain tumours, bone cancer and breast cancer. Some children have already developed multiple cancers and several have died at very young ages.
The donor himself remains healthy. Routine donor screening never detected the mutation because it appeared only in a portion of his sperm cells (up to 20%), not in his blood or saliva tests.
European Sperm Bank expressed “deep sympathy” to affected families and admitted the donor’s sperm was used far beyond national limits in several countries (e.g., 53 children in Belgium instead of the legal maximum of 6 families.
Clinics in Cyprus, Greece, Spain, Germany, Belgium and 10 other countries used the sperm.
Doctors now urge all families conceived with this donor’s sperm to test their children immediately. Affected children require annual full-body MRI scans, brain scans and abdominal ultrasounds for life. Many women later choose preventive mastectomy.
Professor Claire Turnbull, cancer geneticist at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, called it “a devastating diagnosis” that places a lifelong burden on families.
Experts say the case exposes major gaps in international regulation:
- No global limit on how many children one donor can father
- Impossible to screen for every rare genetic mutation
- Large commercial sperm banks sell the same donor’s sperm to dozens of countries
The European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology recently proposed a maximum of 50 families per donor worldwide, mainly to protect the psychological welfare of donor-conceived children who may discover hundreds of half-siblings.
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