Long Lost Family. The future for IVF kids?

In the 1980s there were many sperm clinics where the doctors used their own sperm instead of that of their donors. It’s called Fertility Fraud or Insemination Fraud. If you don’t know about this then brace yourself because it’s truly shocking.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_fraud#Insemination_fraud

Some of the offenders were:
Cecil Jacobson – USA – fathered 15 to 75 children
Donald Cline – USA – fathered 94 or more
Jan Karbaat – Netherlands - fathered 90 to 200 children
There are many more.

There was a programme on the BBC about Jan Karbaat called Seeds of Deceit: The Sperm Donor Doctor.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0gjc647
The children have found each other through DNA and have formed a worldwide family. DNA is the only thing that can help these children.

These men obviously want to live forever and know they have left behind something of themselves that can never be destroyed.

Yes I was aware of those cases.
I also think some of the horror stories about surrogacy that are emerging should give people pause for thought.

Galaxy is right to point out that boys are more likely to be emotionally damaged by the loss of their biological father.
Not having a father because he has died is very different from a loss related to parental separation.
This is an inconvenient truth many women choose to ignore.

There are a whole load of variables as to bringing up any child and their outcomes. However, I think there is a certain amount of evidence around to suggest, that some boys have suffered from the lack of a father. It is an inconvenient truth as others have also posted, that maybe there is a section of society that won't acknowledge that. Particularly prevalent in an environment where machismo is a thing through gang culture and there is a lot of boundary pushing around adolescence when the mother is often the first in the firing line, personally I was damn glad to have my o/h as a back up on that. Boys, here in western society are at times viewed as the less favoured of the sexes, told they're noisy, destructive, useless, lack sustained concentration, they're this, they're that! I was never sure whether there was some subliminal counter balance going on to reinforce the status of girls after years of the negativity that was undoubtedly attached to them as "the second sex" My children and their male peer group were actually told at school during the nineties and early noughties "why can't they be more like the girls" by some, not all, of the female teachers who just didn't relate to boys at all, why they didn't just have done with it and teach in a girls only school, I'll never know because that's where they were most suited. Education has become pretty feminised particularly as to the lack of male teachers, one such factor that could fill the male void in some boys lives. However, understandably teaching is not an attractive proposition for men. On top of all of that boys have some appalling role models, enter the Tate Brothers.

Iam64

It’s inevitable we all reflect on our personal experiences an for some of us the research is important
FWIW my personal and professional experience have been children, later adults, have the need, the desire to know as much as possible about their genetic parents and extended family
I’ve always been uneasy a bout sperm diners. We began to realise adoptive children had the right, the need to know about their birth parents and family of origin. Life story work improved . Who ever thought the anonymounity of sperm diners was more important than the welfare of the chikdren whose lives they helped create ? It feels like state sponsored approval of nonsense of responsibility to me

The world's first IVF baby, was only born in 1979. That was really what triggered semen donation for artificial insemination per vagina .
By 1991, the HFEA (Human Embryology and Fertility Authority ; govt control) had recognised the need for "keeping track" of all donors of eggs, semen and embryos and all legal donors details have been on a database since that year; enabling far more retrospective medical information to be available to the resulting children and families ( no consent of donor required) Although donors were still annonymous until 2005, some of the donors in the previous decade have now volunteered retrospective identification to the children (and families) they created.

So, as far as "the state" is concerned, in reality there was only a decade of blindfold anonymity for legal sperm donors. ( 1979 to 1991). Every legal donor since 1991 is on a database and traceable by HFEA.

What is far MORE concerning is that while DIY sperm donation/ buying/selling/use is illegal in UK, people still do it, evading the HFEA rigourous medical/legal checks on safety and suitability of donor and recipient.

www.hfea.gov.uk/about-us/media-centre/faqs-relating-to-unregulated-sperm-donation

I guess DNA testing is the only way anyone can tell for sure who they really are in the future. Strange how this has come along at the same time as sperm and egg donation because we'd be lost without it. People really would be marrying their siblings without even knowing.