A new review by the Danish Patient Safety Authority finds serious and widespread failures in warning donor families when a sperm donor is later found to carry a hereditary disease.
The review was carried out by Styrelsen for Patientsikkerhed and covers the entire fertility sector. According to DR, Health Minister Ida Auken sent the review to the Danish Parliament’s health spokespeople on Wednesday evening.
The conclusion is that women and families who conceived with donor sperm cannot be certain they were notified in time. That applies when a donor was later found to carry an inherited illness or a dangerous gene mutation, the authority writes.
Under the current rules, fertility clinics and gynecologists must inform women when a sperm bank issues an alert about a donor. The review found that several clinics were not aware of this obligation. They therefore did not contact women who had been treated with the donor’s sperm at the time of the alert.
Styrelsen för Patientsikkerhed describes the failures as large and general problems. The authority also states it is uncertain whether the warnings that were sent actually reached the women involved. Clinics that did send messages reported regular doubt about whether the information arrived.
Many private clinics do not have access to e-Boks and send notifications by ordinary email, the review notes. A number of women do not react to those messages. The authority’s survey of clinics and gynecologists covered donors blocked over the past ten years because of an increased risk of genetic disease.
Prompted by the ‘Kjeld’ case
The review follows DR’s reporting on the anonymous donor known as “Kjeld” from European Sperm Bank, who carries a hidden mutation in some of his sperm cells. DR has previously reported that nearly 40 percent of the 98 Danish and foreign women treated with his sperm in Denmark were not informed immediately by their clinic.
The serious gene defect was identified in 2023, but many women learned of it only when the case reached the media in 2025, according to DR. Children who inherit the defect, in the TP53 gene, face a high risk of developing cancer in childhood or as young adults.
Styrelsen for Patientsikkerhed states that the review process led clinics to contact affected women who had not previously been told. At some clinics and among a number of gynecologists, however, medical records and other data have been lost. The authority writes that it is not possible in all cases to establish which women were treated with sperm from a given donor.
The review does not state whether the authority considers all affected women to have now been notified. DR reports that it is seeking an answer from the authorities on that question.
Auken announced on Wednesday that she is working on a bill to tighten rules across the fertility sector. She plans to summon the health spokespeople within a month, with the aim of sending a bill out for consultation before Christmas.
