Disruption- the least- has caused to Belgium the donor case sperm which has a gene that can cause cancer.
According to a report by the French -speaking newspaper Le Soir, 52 children were arrested in Belgium between 2008 and 2017 by using sperm by the same donor.
As revealed by a recent survey by the British newspaper The Guardian, one Danish donor carrying a rare mutation associated with a high risk of early onset cancer has led to the arrest and birth of 67 children in Europe.
Of the 67 children, 52 were arrested through assisted reproduction in Belgium. The case concerns 37 families living in Belgium and elsewhere, who were informed that One or more of their children were arrested using the sperm of the man carrying this rare genetic mutation.
Each child has a 50% risk of inheriting the donor’s gene and therefore the disease. Ten children have developed cancer, such as leukemia or lymphoma, according to the British newspaper.
During a press conference, the Belgian Health Minister revealed that 52 children were arrested by the same donor sperm from Denmark, between 2008 and 2017 by 37 women (Some of them had more than one child from the same donor) and were attended by twelve fertility centers in Belgium.
“It’s a double trauma: on the one hand, the concern about a real genetic danger, on the other hand, the discovery that their child came from a widely used donor,” the health minister said.
As the French Agency reports, The Belgian Ministry of Health said the case may also be for other European countries: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Germany, Spain, Hungary, Ireland, Greece, the Netherlands and Poland.
The first alarm raised him April 2020, when the donor “X” was temporarily excluded from the European Sperm Bank (ESB) after a child born of him was diagnosed with cancer.
ESB informed fertility centers, however, After analyzing a sample of this sperm to detect the mutation, he informed that the result was negative and the donor was re -approved. In October 2023, the ESB sent a letter to all fertility centers to inform them that a new analysis was ongoing and that the donor had been permanently excluded.
According to the European Sperm Bank, The donor was in good health, had no family history of cancer and was undergoing examinations in accordance with applicable medical and legal instructions. However, at that time, targeted testing for this particular genetic mutation had not even been examined, as it was unknown whether it was linked to the syndrome currently examined.
The mutation of the TP53 gene causes Li-Fraumeni (LFS) syndrome, a hereditary disease that strongly predisposes to the development of early onset cancers.
In Belgium, the Federal Medicines and Health Product Service was alerted by April 2024 and a notice was sent by the end of 2024 through the European Veneration System to identify all the children who have been infected.
According to ‘Soir’, The case highlights the defects in the Belgium monitoring system. Since 2007, the law stipulates that Up to six women (regardless of their nationality and place of residence) can receive sperm from the same donor. The law requires the Belgian centers to verify that sperm banks do not exceed that limit.
However, this limit has been ignored for a long time due to lack of surveillance tools. It is noted that in France, the threshold is set at ten births per donor, in the United Kingdom in twelve and Germany and Denmark at fifteen. However, the European Sperm Bank applied a much higher threshold: 75 children per donor.