You might know someone who needed help having a child. A friend or coworker who needed help growing their family, and turned to a doctor or clinic in search of that special kind of intimate relationship you can get only with a child. You may even have personal experience with the medicine of miracles that fills empty cribs and screens cruel disease. But I’m guessing you don’t know much about how this billion-dollar market came to be.
Assisted reproduction was born in the US a few days after I was, in December 1981, with a baby named Elizabeth Carr. She was typical in every way—except for a basic fact of her existence. Carr was the first American baby conceived in a laboratory. Her arrival set off a panic. Leaders declared: "That is not how we were meant to come into the world." "It’s playing God." "Science has gone too far."
Suddenly everything was up for grabs—not just when life begins, but how. The idea unsettled a lot of people, and put lawmakers in a bind. The government could ban IVF; but now that it worked, how could they deny it to desperate couples? Another option was to regulate. But many feared that would legitimize something they found troubling. That left a third option: Do nothing, and let the private sector sort it out. Which is exactly what happened.
He was sold as "the perfect donor." But it was all a lie.
When fertility treatment goes well, everyone’s overjoyed. But when nobody’s looking, things can take a different turn. As a law professor with a focus on reproductive ethics, I’ve studied loads of embryo mix-ups and freezer meltdowns. I even wrote about them. But there was one case I couldn’t let go of. Because it goes to the heart of this whole enterprise. And it forced me to rethink my own past—in ways I think all of us have wondered where we come from and how that shapes the people we become.
This case started with one man, . For more than a decade, he provided samples to one of the world’s biggest sperm banks. They kept selling out. His profile described a 6'4" neuroscience PhD student who had Einstein’s IQ and looked like Tom Cruise. The guy was an internationally acclaimed drummer who played six sports and spoke five languages. He was sold as "the perfect donor." But it was all a lie. And the truth posed grave risks for untold numbers of his biological children.
I discovered it was far more than just any single man or company. Behind this story was a whole industry with loose oversight and few safeguards. There are no limits on how many kids come from any one guy, for example. Ancestry websites reveal popular donors like 9623 can have scores of kids, sometimes hundreds. Sperm banks aren’t required to run background checks or test for hereditary disorders, either. They don’t even have to share medical updates—however reliable or urgent—with the families.
Sperm banks keep names secret, so parents can’t vet donors on their own. College-age men like 9623 are promised “an easy, anonymous way to make serious money.” Like other details about themselves, health risks are mostly self-reported and taken on faith. Whatever a donor holds back stays hidden unless his identity gets leaked. That’s how the case of Donor 9623 wound up in court.
