[HN Gopher] The Lie That Made Me
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The Lie That Made Me
Author : dadt
Score : 65 points
Date : 2022-03-09 17:31 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (torontolife.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (torontolife.com)
| 6thaccount wrote:
| reactspa wrote:
| mcphage wrote:
| > It was supposed to be an anonymous donor.
|
| The donor was supposed to be anonymous, but not random. You
| don't know their name, but you do learn things about them, and
| you pick the donor because of those things you were told. And
| in many cases here, what the recipient was told, was a lie.
| phkahler wrote:
| You left out that the donor was not supposed to be a donor at
| all.
|
| I'd also argue that the doctor using his own probably has
| serious NPD, and if there is a genetic component to that, this
| is the last thing we need.
| criddell wrote:
| The donor isn't always anonymous. The article mentions some
| surrogate pregnancies where the husband's sperm was supposed to
| be used to fertilize a donor egg.
|
| Even when it is anonymous, that doesn't necessarily mean
| anything goes:
|
| > Today, choosing a donor is like ordering out of a catalogue.
| Women scroll through dozens of men's profiles, searching for
| traits they believe would make an ideal biological father.
|
| If somebody sells you one thing and then delivers something
| different, it's fraud. I'm pretty sure even outside of western
| countries, fraud is illegal. When a licensed professional does
| it, it's professional misconduct and that's serious as well.
| fouc wrote:
| In addition to that, it's a serious abuse of power & breach
| of trust on the doctor's part. Doctors are relied on to be
| ethical.
| [deleted]
| 9oliYQjP wrote:
| The donor is anonymous but their characteristics are heavily
| marketed. In cases like this one, parents feel like they were
| intentionally misled: promised one thing and sold something
| else. I haven't had time to read the full article, but in many
| cases the decision about which sperm to use is made based on
| donor characteristics that are considered desirable: height,
| hair, skin colour, intelligence, lack of self-reported mental
| conditions, etc. The sperm they are provided tends to be from
| donors who don't measure up in these areas.
|
| Furthermore, several stories resemble this one where a
| fertility doctor used his own sperm and that is considered
| particularly egregious. Not only for the reasons mentioned
| above, but because doing so is considered lying by omission.
| There are also notions of fairness with respect to fathering
| children: don't father too many and fulfill your
| responsibilities towards the ones you do. Biologically
| fathering dozens if not hundreds of children and having nothing
| to do with them afterward is considered unfair to the children,
| even if they happen to have a real father who raises them.
| cinntaile wrote:
| I think you still get to choose character traits or other
| genetic factors even though the donor is anonymous? If someone
| swaps out your choice this affects the outcome that you hoped
| for.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > I think you still get to choose character traits or other
| genetic factors even though the donor is anonymous?
|
| I suspect that there's no persuasive evidence that character
| traits are determined by genetic factors in ways that we can
| control or reliably predict.
| akavi wrote:
| Given that mental illness is stochastically predictable via
| genetics, I'd be very surprised if that's true.
|
| A quick google found a twin study suggesting that they're
| significantly inheritable:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8776880/
| detaro wrote:
| > _The doctor used his own sperm, anonymously._
|
| Not for the case of the author of the article, that one is even
| worse.
|
| And generally, lying about _any_ step with something like this
| is a massive breach of trust. If things are claimed, they are
| expected to be honest.
| worik wrote:
| anonymous sperm donation has been a bit of a disaster.
|
| It matters who your father is. For emotional reasons, and for
| medical ones.
|
| Collecting sperm off young men for $50 a pop is madness. And it
| seems that young men know it and do not donate. Hence the
| deception layered over the badness of the whole idea.
|
| I do not think that understanding who your family is is a
| particularly "western" preoccupation.
| gowld wrote:
| What's mad about it? Most people don't donate because they
| don't care (there are a lot of things I could do for $50 for
| a few hours of overhead and work), and there is plenty of
| supply from the people for whom $50 is worth paying attention
| to.
| madrox wrote:
| This is so incredibly sad. At this point in my life, I empathize
| with the involuntary donor quite a bit. While the author might
| not understand his position not wanting her to have any contact
| with him or his family, I certainly do.
|
| It's clear this doctor has a pattern of deceptive behavior beyond
| merely his practice. It's also clear that if one doctor does it,
| someone else has or will. I wonder how the medical board can
| better filter out chronic deceivers or at least better regulate
| it.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Can you explain that in more detail? Because I don't understand
| it at all.
|
| If somehow it turned out I have other children, I'd love to
| know how they're doing and if they're similar to me or my kid.
| A personal data point on the nature vs nurture debate!
|
| I can understand not wanting additional financial
| responsibilities - but that can't be the worry here, the author
| is in her 30s.
| darkerside wrote:
| Some people don't want to accept that the story of their life
| is not what they think it is
| einpoklum wrote:
| While that doctor's behavior was indeed utterly unacceptable, I'm
| not sure I understand the insistence on figuring out which sperm
| donation got you pregnant (if you're the mother) or who exactly
| your biological father is.
|
| A hundred men donate sperm at some clinic, and then went on with
| their lives. If it were me, I doubt I would want to pick out one
| of them and try to pull them into my life. He hasn't done
| something significant distinguishing him from all the rest which
| merits this. At least - that's how I feel about it.
|
| And after all, Penina (the mother) herself...
|
| > worried such an arrangement [donation from a friend-of-a-
| friend] would be emotionally and legally fraught, especially if
| the man wished to be involved in the baby's life.
| madrox wrote:
| If you're a certain kind of person who is either lonely or lost
| in life, it's a mission with a purpose whose reward may be a
| connection that makes you feel less alone. Readinging between
| the lines of this article, it sounds like this author may be a
| bit of both.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Agreed, it seems odd to have a strong emotional reaction to the
| discovery that your father is Donor #3855 instead of Donor
| #2291.
|
| On the other hand, inheriting celiac is pretty awful.
| tomrod wrote:
| 23andMe and similar services, though creepy to a degree to have
| your genetic information linked and profiled, have spawned a
| minor industry of social and familial alignment. Half-siblings
| and half-aunts/uncles are being found to be more common than
| people realized.
|
| The convergence of technology and society is fascinating. This
| was an interested read on the mispractice of a fertility doctor.
| anonporridge wrote:
| I'm honestly a little worried about the social fracturing that
| could happen as genetic and paternity testing get increasingly
| cheap and ubiquitous.
|
| My intuition is that infidelity and paternity fraud is wildly
| more common than anyone wants to believe, and old social orders
| will break down as it becomes impossible to ignore and trivial
| for even light suspicions to be validated.
|
| I have to believe it's good in the long run, because I think
| any order built on the foundation of deception is inherently
| fragile and ultimately doomed. There's a stronger order on the
| other side, but potential chaos through the transition.
| invalidOrTaken wrote:
| Better to rip off the bandaid, honestly. Rather than old
| social orders breaking down, I think we'll see some of them
| _strengthened_ , as the reasons for their institution in the
| first place get harder to ignore.
| anonporridge wrote:
| 100% agree. Society is stronger if we don't build
| structures as important as families on a foundation of
| lies.
|
| Hell, I personally believe paternity testing should be damn
| near mandated and routine for every birth before the father
| is allowed to sign the birth certificate. It would make
| every family stronger by removing any possible doubt of
| fidelity and responsibility.
| kryptiskt wrote:
| There was a study that showed that cuckoldry was pretty rare,
| the rate was around 1-2%[0]:
|
| "Reading the internet, or even perusing the scientific
| literature, you'd get the idea that people are constantly
| cheating on their spouses. Indeed, scientists have estimated
| that anywhere from 10-30 percent of men are unknowingly
| raising children who are not their own. This situation is
| referred to as cuckoldry, or scientifically as "extra-pair
| paternity." Now, however, it appears that our estimates of
| cuckoldry rates were way off.
|
| A new survey published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution
| sums up a number of recent studies that show the actual rate
| of cuckolds in the general population, based on genetic
| testing and ancestor research, is 1-2 percent. This
| challenges evolutionary psychologists who have suggested that
| human women "routinely 'shop around' for good genes by
| engaging in extra-pair copulation to obtain genetic
| benefits." This idea came in part from studying socially
| monogamous songbirds, which mate for life but have roughly 1
| in 10 babies as a result of "extra pair" matings."
|
| [0]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/cuckoldry-is-
| incredi...
| CPLX wrote:
| That's a massive number. It means that basically every time
| you go out to dinner you're in the room with someone who
| doesn't know that their father isn't their father.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Considering nobody ever considers it, 1-2% is huge! 1 in
| every 50-100 families. How many people from different
| families do you know?
|
| Even if your family isn't one of affected, I'd bet you know
| several people from affected families.
| akavi wrote:
| I would strongly expect it to be clustered in specific
| populations. I'd be very surprised if the rate among HN
| readers was equal to the rate among the general
| population.
| anonporridge wrote:
| There are about 120 million households in the US. Lets
| assume that approximately 100 million are parental
| households with children (either still dependents or
| grown and independent).
|
| We're talking at least 1-2 million families that could be
| affected by paternity fraud in the US alone. That has the
| potential to be massively disruptive if exposed to these
| 1-2 million families.
| brimble wrote:
| Further, if those rates are similar across time and
| roughly evenly distributed among populations, it means
| that carefully-researched family tree your aunt (or
| whoever) has spent so much time working on gets
| unreliable (as far as biological parentage) _fast_ , the
| more generations you go back. "Look, I'm distantly
| related to [famous person]!" Well... maybe.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > Further, if those rates are similar across time and
| roughly evenly distributed among populations
|
| They're not. Rates of extra paternity events vary a lot
| by social class[1]. I'd be shocked if that wasn't true
| for different ethnic groups.
|
| [1] A Historical-Genetic Reconstruction of Human Extra-
| Pair Paternity
|
| Highlights
|
| * Combining genetic and genealogical data illuminates our
| ancestors' sexual behavior
|
| * Gene-genealogy mismatches imply extra-pair paternity
| (EPP)
|
| * Historical EPP rates were low overall (~1%) but varied
| depending on social context
|
| * EPP rates were highest (~6%) among urban families with
| low socioeconomic status
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098
| 221...
| gowld wrote:
| It could be that modern birth control has reduced the rate
| of extra-pair paternity, as sexual impulses have
| (partially) decoupled from procreation.
| anonporridge wrote:
| From the above article...
|
| > Scientists were so unwilling to believe that human
| women were different from songbirds that some suggested
| the discrepancy between expected and actual rates of
| cuckoldry was a recent development caused by birth
| control.
|
| It would be quite interesting to do a study on modern
| social groups where birth control isn't yet ubiquitous.
| It could be fairly easy to do this kind of study covertly
| and anonymize the source so as to not risk throwing it
| into disarray if the results come back with high rates of
| cuckoldery.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > It could be fairly easy to do this kind of study
| covertly and anonymize the source so as to not risk
| throwing it into disarray if the results come back with
| high rates of cuckoldery.
|
| Are you sure? A covert study seems likely unethical, and
| attempts at anonymization tend to show it's much harder
| than people think.
| anonporridge wrote:
| I'd love for this to be true, but it does conflict with
| various state policy decisions on the matter that seem to
| indicate at least a belief in the opposite. France's policy
| is particularly striking,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_paternity_testing#France
|
| It is possible that state institutions make these policies
| based exactly on my assumption above, which seems like it
| could be incorrect. Or perhaps even 1-2% is still enough to
| cause significant social cost if easily exposed.
| quirkot wrote:
| In France, when you get married or have a kid you get a
| family book and it is the official record of your family.
| If you don't put a kid in, they don't have the same
| rights and vice versa. Really leans into the "family is a
| social construct" angle
| madrox wrote:
| "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be" and all
| that.
|
| Any time there's discussions of this kind, though, it feels
| like a slippery slope to Gattaca. If you think about it, in
| many ways the urge for your genes to be the ones that make it
| are one of the only things holding us back from a genetically
| engineered society and genetic discrimination.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| I'm not even remotely in the author's situation, but who hasn't
| sometimes resented some aspect of how they came to be? To which
| my own response is always "but that's what produced me! If
| anything had gone differently in even the minutest way (like
| which of those wiggly things wins the race) I wouldn't be here!
| Someone else would be. Case closed.
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