The best way to find a sperm donor

Choosing a sperm donor is a very important decision, and everyone brings their perspectives to this challenge.

It is essential to maximize safety from the risks of inadvertent transmission of an infectious disease.
Another important safety consideration is minimizing the risk of transmission of a genetic disease to the child.

There is much misunderstanding about the importance of inheritance in determining the kind of child which will result from the contribution of its biological father. Each egg and sperm contains half the genes of the respective parent, and thus the child shares half its genes with each parent – but only half. There is no way to determine which genetic attributes will be inherited by a specific individual until after conception when in special cases genetic testing on the embryo, fetus, or child can provide useful information. Thus children to some extent resemble their parents, but the resemblance is far from complete. The genetic connection to siblings also involves sharing half of one’s genes. Siblings typically are far from identical in most characteristics – but they nevertheless tend to resemble one another more than would two randomly selected, unrelated people.

How much does genetic inheritance matter in determining what kind of person one becomes? Optimizing the environment, broadly defined to include good nutrition, parental love, excellent educational opportunities, and more will of course help each child reach its full potential. But there is extensive evidence that this potential is heavily influenced by inheritance.