»*Anonymous* sperm donor traced through internet«

LATE last year, a 15-year-old boy rubbed a swab along the inside of his cheek, popped it into a vial and sent it off to an online genealogy DNA-testing service. But unlike most people who contact the service, he was not interested in sketching the far reaches of his family tree. His mother had conceived using donor sperm and he wanted to track down his genetic father.

That the boy succeeded using only the DNA test, genealogical records and some internet searches has huge implications for the hundreds of thousands of people who were conceived using donor sperm. With the explosion of information about genetic inheritance, any man who has donated sperm could potentially be found by his biological offspring. Absent and unknown fathers will also become easier to trace.

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In the UK and various other countries, sperm donors must now allow their identity to be revealed to their children once they reach a certain age, but in the US most sperm donors are still anonymous.

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The news will be especially unsettling for men who donated anonymously before the power of genetics was fully appreciated. Donors were often college students who traded their sperm for beer money. Many have not told their wives or children and have never considered the implications of having a dozen offspring suddenly wanting to meet them. "The case shows that there are ethical and social concerns about assisted reproduction that we did not think about," says Trudo Lemmens, a bioethicist at the University of Toronto, Canada.

And the implications go beyond offspring searching for their genetic fathers. "The DNA could have come from a crime scene," says Sykes. Police could perform similar searches to identify a criminal's surname, giving vital leads in a case. "There are tremendous forensic ramifications," he adds.