Seeds of Deceit on BBC4 and iPlayer

What a disgusting man who clearly thought he was God. The awful thing is that his legacy will live for ever and can never be eradicated. I was completely creeped out in the first episode which was almost like a horror film, but it became more scientific after that. I am always interested in sperm donation as a concept because I think it is so wrong. Every child has the right to know who they are.

There!s a great podcast about this.

Yes. I watched it earlier this week.
The children seemed to be very upbeat about meeting each other but some definitely struggled with finding out about their biological father.
The fact that some of the children already knew each other was scary.
The man/doctor was clearly deranged!

I haven't watched it all yet, but some children seem quite happy just to know who their father was, which is of course good for them as some children never know. However, they are only lucky enough to know the identity of their father because of the miracle of DNA testing. What they should realise is that their father (the doctor) would never have done such a thing if DNA testing was around then because he would have been found out. The seriousness of his crime becomes apparent if DNA testing had never become available, in which case those children would have to spend the rest of their lives wondering who they were. I'm not sure they truly realise that, and how deadly serious and wrong it all was.

It was fascinating. I keep getting drawn into these documentaries. There was another one the other week about a man who isolated his children from the outside world. What happens is I’ll start watching one of these documentaries whilst channel hopping and then realise it’s a series of several problems and have to watch them all.What was even worse (if that’s at all possible)than the doctor was the other two men who had fathered many children.

I've finished the 2nd episode and it became like a bumper edition of Long Lost Family! The children have met up and bonded, some of them forged strong links. There are 90 in the DNA group altogether, and of course there could be many more unknown children.

I felt so sad for their mothers, some of whom felt violated almost as if they'd been raped. In some cases it had affected their relationship with their child. Some of the children seem to have embraced their father and one even wanted to change to his surname. How hurtful for his mother.

When I saw the horses riding along the beach it just sunk home, the lasting legacy which will never die. All those children had inherited his love of horse riding. Utterly creepy.

Various reviews of this programme point out that very many of the children and families did not want to be interviewed, but we saw in the brief clip of a court case that one woman had inherited a number of diseases from the doctor, and many children with the autistic sperm donor were also autistic. Some were very badly affected. There had been no health checks whatsoever.

It seemed to me that only the adult children who were more accepting had agreed to be filmed. There were only one or two interviews with those who were angry.

You mention inherited "love of horse riding" Chestnut, and it was briefly mentioned that quite a few children of the doctor had inherited his high sex drive and strong interest in sexual matters.

With no testing it was tragic that other donors passed on faulty genes.

The whole genetic aspect was utterly creepy because there were so many of his children, it was almost like a scientific experiment. Frankenstein comes to mind, meddling with human life. But if there was no DNA testing what did the doctor think would be the outcome, did he simply want to ensure he left a huge footprint behind? You just wonder what went on in his mind.

Apart from the sexual gene there was a criminal gene too, the doctor's father committed illegal activities and so did the doctor.

It seems this was just the tip of the iceberg. This is happening on a colossal scale worldwide, which I suppose was obvious if you think about it. And when there are so many half siblings the chances of people marrying their half brother or sister increases a lot, especially within the same country.
Quote:
Leading fertility scientists have accused the UK's regulator of failing to act to protect children conceived by sperm donation, after it emerged some foreign donors had fathered more than a thousand offspring worldwide.

The full article is here:
Sperm donors are fathering hundreds of children

I’ve heard of this before- I think there was an American doc who did the same. There is a danger that the offspring grow up and fall in love with each other without having any clue that they are brothers and sisters, especially in small towns. I was thinking it might also be down to laziness on the part of the doctor, can’t be bothered getting the sperm donor deposits. I suppose there might be a certain appeal to a certain type of person to populating the world, quite biblical. Thinks he is Adam or something.

I think there are men who feel a sense of power and importance from producing hundreds of offspring. I find the whole thing absolutely vile and unnatural. The doctor in the series had a favourite donor who visited his clinic, but in reality he was donating between three clinics for several years. We know he had 200 children, but as time goes by goodness knows how many more will appear in the DNA matches. The problem is that these children will only be discovered if they go to Ancestry or 23andme to have their DNA tested. If they don't go then they will never be discovered and can end up marrying a sibling. In the series there were some children who actually knew each other and went to the same school, so they could easily get together.