South African Expat Searching for Sperm Donor Dad… A Former Wits Student

A South African expat living in the US recently discovered she was a sperm donor child. She is now on a mission to find the former Wits Medical School student who donated his sperm. Another South African expat, a medical practitioner living in the UK, was once a sperm donor from Wits. Below they each speak exclusively to  SAPeople from different sides of the story…

South African expat and sperm donor child:

Three years ago, when I was 33 I received an email from someone claiming to be my half-sister… writes Maxene. We matched up as half-siblings on the DNA website 23andme. This was an absolute life-changing surprise!

I submitted my DNA to 23andme to get a better idea of where my ancestry was from, as my parents had been very vague.

I never imagined discovering what I discovered.

My first thoughts were that my dad cheated and that’s how I have this half-sister. But she said her parents confessed that they used a sperm donor to conceive her and her sister.

The story is that he was a medical student at the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) in the late ’70s / early 80s. That was or is common practice for male medical students to donate sperm.

I asked my parents if I was donor conceived. And they finally confessed their Big Secret. The story matched up with my new sister’s. We were conceived at Park Lane Fertility Centre Johannesburg.

Over the last few years I discovered that the brother I grew up with is only a half-sibling with a different sperm donor father. And I discovered through AncestryDNA.com that my sister and I have another sister.

Our donor dad has at least 3 biological daughters. (We are all the same age.) We grew up in the same area of Johannesburg, who knows we might have met each other before.

The scary thing is, how many siblings do we have? Do we have brothers we grew up with? Went to school with? Dated? Having an anonymous biological father/siblings could be dangerous. What happens if we marry (unbeknownst to us) our half-siblings?

Adopted children are supported and pushed to find and meet their biological parents. Why are donor-conceived children shunned of that same right?

I’ve been giving my (amazing) social father’s medical history when asked. I feel so silly. They didn’t do genetic testing on sperm donations in the 80s. I am clueless on anything medical related on my father’s side.

I think these men are thoughtless and selfish going into sperm donation under anonymity.

I don’t know if they got paid back then*, or if they had limits on how many times they could donate. But I know now in South Africa, that men are not allowed to get paid for the actual donation. Also they can’t father more than three live births. [* See interview below.]

Who knows how many siblings I have? 5, 20, 400?

I live in the US now, my sisters both live in London. In the US, there is no regulation on sperm donation.

In small communities there is a good incidence of a phenomenon called Genetic Sexual Attraction. This is where biological related strangers, have such an connection to each other – that they end up in a intimate relationship, only to find out they are close relatives. (As seen on ‘Sisters’ on Netflix.)

I’m 100% sure that sperm donation was or is taking place at universities all around SA and the world. Parents want their children’s seed to come from someone “intelligent”, so finding a college-educated donor is very popular.

I’m not trying to wreck my biological father’s family, and I don’t want money from him. At the very least I would like a full medical history. (And perhaps a photo ?).

I met a gentleman who was a medical student in the early 80s at Wits. I asked if he donated? He said most of his classmates did. I asked him if he ever thought about his biological children? He told me he never thought about “them” until I asked the question.

With all the DNA companies appearing and going worldwide, perhaps we will find him and our other family members soon.

I understand my biological father may not be alive anymore. But he has contributed to a legacy, linking our future and ancient ancestors.

We are blood family like it or not.

There are many donor-conceived children’s Facebook Pages that have wonderful success stories of children meeting their biological parents. There are also stories where the donor parents refused to meet there offspring.

I haven’t had any success with my page – WitsMedSpermDonors. But I’m trying to use it to bring awareness to people that donor children should have rights. And to let donor fathers know that their CHOICE of donation has serious repercussions that involve many people.

There shouldn’t be a debate! There are not only two people involved in sperm donor conception. What about the child or children?

***

Anonymous former Wits Medical student, and sperm donor:

Nowadays there’s this whole process to become a sperm donor. You have to be screened hectically first. And they keep amazing records about who you are, what you do. And now I think your sperm would be frozen, I’m not sure.

Whereas in those days – late 70s, early 80s –  the chick who was about to be inseminated would be f***ing sitting in the waiting room when you came to w*nk in a bottle. She got it hot off the press! You had to come in at a set time. There was no freezing it and eggs and all that sh*t. There was no intro-fertilisation in those days.

You might have had some of the worst genetic problems – but there was nothing. It was a free-for-all.

You were supposed to have your own bottles. But often you didn’t – so you’d go to reception – where the chick waiting would be sitting – and say: ‘I need a bottle’. It was completely unregulated. There was no monitoring. They didn’t check anything. Nothing.

The gynae used to call you on the day, and some days he would say: “I need two specimens”, so I used to persuade one of my mates to come along. You used to get paid about R30 a time. So when my mate came, I used to give him R20 and I’d keep R10.

You couldn’t give two a day yourself. The minimum was once a day. That was about the only regulation.

Sometimes the receptionist would help out!

It was a shit load of money. You can’t believe how much R30 could buy you back then. It really was. I bought a car.

I used to service two different places – Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Every now and then one of these guys would call up when he needed a specimen on a Saturday, and it was like dude I’ve just spent all night f***ing my girlfriend.

This was in the late ’70s. About 1979. That’s when I got into it. There were guys at Wits Medical School who had these arrangements – and when the guy, a year ahead of me, left Joburg or to go to the army, the gynae said “just give us somebody else”. That’s how they got people. So this guy just liked me so he gave me the ‘job’…

Nowadays – the tests are so stringent. Now they look at everything. There are so many diseases or inherited problems that come with this. If your dad died of cancer, the chances are you might get cancer. Nowadays when people go to these sperm banks they want to know everything – they probably have to have serious tests to be vetted nowadays. In those days, what if the guy was HIV and they didn’t know. So nowadays it’s heavily vetted.

And it’s engineered a bit now… especially when they can do genetic tests on you and look to see things you will be susceptible to… because they don’t want you passing that down to somebody else’s kid.

Then it was a f***ing free for all.

I wouldn’t want to know who any of these kids are. Absolutely not. I would not add my name to the database. Absolutely not. It was a process. We were kids. It was a w*nk. You were probably going to w*nk anyway. And this way you got paid R30…

***

Maxene says:

“Thank you donor dad for helping to create me. We are looking for our simple birthright that was stolen from us with your anonymity. I grew up in a good home, but I still feel abandoned.

“I have a gaping hole in my heart that only YOU have the piece to fill. You made a choice that resulted in a real child or many children. Real humans that are in the world searching for a connection. Real people who feel lost in the world without knowing you. We are not just a “donation”, we are part of you and your family – There is no way around this.”

She has posted this message for family members:

Are you a child or wife of a doctor that went to Wits in the 1970-80’s? There is a good probability that your dad or husband donated sperm. There may be so many half-siblings out there. Hey you may need a kidney one day ?

??Kindly share this post. It’s a small world after all.

https://www.facebook.com/WitsMedSpermDonors/photos/rpp.457285754480733/681259212083385/?type=3&theater

MORE

www.facebook.com/WitsMedSpermDonors/

www.donors-of-wits-med.com