A sperm donor whose genetic mutation has condemned at least 197 children across Europe to a 90% chance of developing cancer fathered no children in Cyprus, the Health Ministry has confirmed.
Some children have already died. Others have developed two different cancers. Only a minority of those who inherited the mutation will avoid the disease during their lifetimes.
The donor, an anonymous Danish man paid for his sperm whilst a student, unknowingly carried a defect that disables the body’s main defence against cancer. His sperm was used for 17 years, from 2005 onwards, and sent to 14 countries including Cyprus.
Cyprus escaped exposure because of strict national laws limiting each donor’s use to a single family, the ministry said. An investigation launched last spring when the first 67 affected children were identified confirmed no child was born here from his donations, despite his sperm reaching the island.
A BBC investigation published today revealed the scale has nearly tripled to at least 197 children, though the final number may be higher as data hasn’t been obtained from all countries.
“We have many children who have already developed cancer. We have some children who have already presented with two different cancers and some have already died at a very young age,” said Dr Edwige Kasper, a cancer geneticist at Rouen University Hospital in France who presented findings at the European Conference on Human Genetics this year.
Doctors identified 23 children with the genetic variant among the 67 then known. Ten had already been diagnosed with cancer.
The mutation affects the TP53 gene, which stops cells becoming cancerous. Up to 20% of the donor’s sperm carried the dangerous variant. Any child conceived from affected sperm has the mutation in every cell of their body—a condition called Li Fraumeni syndrome that dramatically increases cancer risk, particularly during childhood, and breast cancer later in life.
The donor himself and his family are healthy. He passed all screening tests. The European Sperm Bank said such mutations “are not detected preventively with genetic testing”—explaining how a catastrophic flaw slipped through safety checks.
Yet the bank made critical errors. In April 2020, it temporarily blocked the donor after a child born from his sperm developed cancer. The ESB tested a sample, declared the result negative, and re-approved him. Only in October 2023 did it permanently block him whilst conducting a new analysis.
For 18 months after the first cancer diagnosis, his sperm remained available.
The case emerged publicly last June when Belgian newspaper Le Soir revealed 52 children had been conceived from the donor in Belgium alone between 2008 and 2017. A Guardian investigation then found 67 children across Europe, with 52 conceived through assisted reproduction in Belgium. The Belgian Health Ministry warned other European countries were affected, including Cyprus.
The Health Ministry’s Medically Assisted Reproduction Council was briefed at its most recent meeting. Based on current data, no issue appears to arise for Cyprus, sources told philenews. The ministry has monitored the case since last spring when the first affected children came to light.
The European Sperm Bank said it “immediately blocked” the donor once the problem was discovered, though the timeline suggests otherwise. It remains unknown how many of the 197 children inherited the dangerous mutation, but those who did face a lifetime shadowed by cancer risk that regulators failed to prevent.
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