In the 1950s, filmmaker Barry Stevens’ mother desperately wanted to have children, but his father was infertile. So, in London, England, a doctor injected his mother with sperm from an anonymous man.
After years of trying to identify his biological father, Mr. Stevens uncovered the name of the man whose sperm was used to conceive him.
But here’s where it gets more interesting.
Mr. Stevens also discovered he may be genetically linked to up to 600 siblings.
His half-siblings began showing up on genealogy websites, and most of them were completely unaware of how they had been conceived until their genetics revealed it. So far, he has connected with 45 of them.
Until the arrival of inexpensive consumer DNA tests, anonymity was the norm for donors.
The filmmaker documented his story in the CBC Docs POV film, The World’s Biggest Family. which airs Thursday, October 1, at 8:00 p.m.
Read more about Mr. Stevens’ story, the stories he uncovered about fertility clinics in England, Canada, and the United States, and the hidden costs of donor anonymity in Finding out I had 600 siblings sent me on a quest to end sperm donor anonymity and in a related article, How a Toronto woman discovered she has up to 600 half-siblings.
