GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: If this is fatherhood, well, I’m a Dutchman

sábado, 2 de septiembre de 2017

BioEdge: If this is fatherhood, well, I’m a Dutchman

If this is fatherhood, well, I’m a Dutchman

by Michael Cook | 2 Sep 2017 |

Ed Houben with relationships / RTL News

The 18th Century adventurer Giacomo Casanova measured his virility by the number of women he had seduced. After the reproductive revolution, his epigones benchmark theirs by the number of offspring produced from their sperm. In the headlines in the week before Father’s Day are two Dutchmen who have sired over 100 children.

One anonymous man who donated to 11 IVF clinics in the Netherlands is responsible for 102 children – even though Dutch law bans donation at more than one clinic and limits the number of children to 25. In another case, a man donated to two clinics, fathering two children. The Dutch gynecologists association NVOG asked the clinics to stop using the men’s sperm immediately.

There is no central sperm donor registry in the Netherlands, so IVF clinics do not know if men have donated elsewhere. The NVOG was tipped off by a group of single mothers, who also suspect that the two men may have fathered many other children using the more traditional method.

The best known proponent of this is a 47-year-old teacher named Ed Houben, who is featured in RTL News. Once he reached the maximum number of donations through a clinic, he advertised his services as a sperm donor or as a stud. He regards helping desperate women to become pregnant as an altruistic gesture. Women contact him from all over the world, he says. So far he believes that he has sired 114 children.

“Fatherhood” is what the guys in the business of policing the language call an “essentially contested concept” – no matter how much palaver you invest in it, you won’t make any progress. At least nowadays.

Below we feature a story from the Netherlands about two men who have each sired over a hundred children, one through sperm donation to IVF clinics, the other mostly through more conventional channels. Are they fathers?

Another story comes from Australia, which is girding its loins for a campaign on same-sex marriage. A group promoting closer links between fathers and their children, Dads4Kids, has been running a public service TV advertisement for 15 years. This year, a 30-second spot of a dad crooning to his wee sprog was rejected because it was “too political”.

A spokesman for the foundation complained:

“It is extraordinary that this is where we have come to as a country; we can no longer celebrate Father’s Day without being forced to look at it through the lens of the same-sex marriage debate. It’s a tragedy that a political motive is now implied in any mention of fatherhood. Not everything is about same-sex marriage.”

The history of this simple advertisement tracks the evolving concept. In a span of 15 years, fatherhood, or rather “fatherhood”, has shifted from a universally admired status to a politically suspect notion. Are we the better for it?

Happy Father’s Day to our Australian readers.