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Sunday, June 17, 2012

Accessing Donor Information in Australia Paper

Caroline Lorbach and myself have just had a paper published in a special edition of the Journal of Law and Medicine which focuses on donor conception here in Australia.
http://sites.thomsonreuters.com.au/journals/2012/06/15/journal-of-law-and-medicine-update-june-2012/

Here is the abstract:
Donor conception practices in Australia have left thousands of donor-conceived people, their families and gamete donors bereft of information. The lack of a nationally timeline-consistent approach to information access has driven these people to seek support and information from self-help groups, online communities and even their own DNA. This article examines the historical perspective of information access and how progress is being made through lobbying and public awareness. To determine the current status of information availability, fertility clinics around Australia were surveyed. It is argued that current practices continue to fail donor-conceived people, their families and gamete donors, and that until all donor offspring are afforded the right to know their genetic family history, they will continue to suffer discrimination, and potentially risk psychological and physical trauma.

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