LONDON — A sperm donor who unknowingly carried a gene variant that can cause cancers fathered nearly 200 children across Europe, some of whom have already died, according to an investigation published Wednesday by a group of 14 European news organizations.
The man started donating sperm at Denmark’s European Sperm Bank in 2005, which was sold to women from at least a dozen countries over roughly 17 years, the organizations reported. He is healthy and had passed the donor screening checks, but some of his cells had a mutation in a gene called TP53, the healthy version of which helps prevent the body’s cells from turning malignant. Donor checks don’t often look for rare mutations.
