Gamete donor medical records: whose information is it?

Is it ethical, moral and feasible to release gamete donors’ medical records to conceived offspring?

This year, the Law Reform Committee of the Parliament of Victoria released recommendations from an inquiry into various aspects of donor conception, including the ability of donor-conceived people to access identifying and medical information about their donors.1 The Committee recommended that donor-conceived people gain retrospective access to such information, similar to the model already used in adoption. National Health and Medical Research Council guidelines2 and Victorian legislation (Infertility Treatment Act 1995 [Vic], s. 79) stipulate that donor-conceived people have this right, but only prospectively from when the law was implemented. Substantive concerns have been raised about how these proposed changes may negatively affect medical practice and donors. Here, I focus on the issue of retrospective release of donors’ medical information.