Donor sperm boy traced his father using the internet

This is not just about sperm donors. It would sometimes be possible to
trace the father of a boy for other purposes such as child support.

"Scientists have given warning that men who have given sperm are now at
risk of being traced by offspring with the dramatic growth of genealogy
and DNA databases on the internet. They said that guarantees of
anonymity, which have been given to thousands of donors over the years,
could prove worthless with the increase in such resources.

"The boy, who was 15 at the time, was able to evade safeguards by
sending a swab of saliva taken from the inside of his cheek to a
website used by genealogists to chart their family trees. For a fee of
$289 (£163), his DNA was mapped and added to the website's database,
which sends e-mail alerts to its customers when close matches appear.
The service, www.familytreedna.com, compares the users Y chromosome -
which passes from father to son virtually unchanged - against a
database of Y chromosomes from other men.

"Nine months later the teenager, an American who has not been named,
was informed of two close matches. He was contacted by the two men, who
were both using the website to trace their family trees. Though the
biological father had never supplied his DNA to the site, his Y
chromosome profile, shared by his son and closely matched by the two
other men, suggested they must be related.... Using this information,
he then used a second website, www.omnitrace.com, to compare the
surname with the few details of his biological father given by the
fertility clinic, which include date and place of birth, and his
college degree. The search brought up a match for his father".

For links, etc, see:

http://www.childsupportanalysis.co.u...5/m11.htm#d03a

--
Barry Pearson
http://www.childsupportanalysis.co.uk/
http://www.barry.pearson.name/photography/
http://www.birdsandanimals.info/