False Beliefs about Gamete Donors

One of the factors that most worries patients who are going to undergo an assisted reproduction technique involving gamete donation is the profile of the donors.

Often, and generally due to a lack of accurate information, patients have an image of donors based on myths and false beliefs that do not correspond to reality.

The donor profile: the most frequent myths

Between 2012 and 2013, at Clinica Tambre they analyzed the profile of 593 people who offered themselves as gamete donors and drew the following conclusions:

  • Gamete donors are very young: False. Donors are accepted from 18 to 35 years old, and the average, according to available data, is 25 years old in women and 23 in men.
  • Gamete donors are motivated exclusively by financial compensation: 27% of aspiring donors say they are motivated by an interest in helping others to have children, while 38% say they are motivated by a combination of wanting to help and financial compensation; only 17% say they do it solely for financial reasons.
  • Anyone can be a gamete donor: at our center, all those who present themselves as donors undergo a medical and psychological evaluation. After that, 25.50% of the applicants are rejected. To this should be added the percentage of subjects who are rejected on medical grounds. The main reasons for rejection after psychological evaluation are: detected risk profile (to mental disorders, abandonment or regret), history of alcohol or drug abuse, history of psychotic disorders and suicide, problems with the law, complete ignorance of family history, own history related to their mental health.
  • The majority of donors are students: according to our data, 32.50% of the people who were accepted as donors were students, 5.25% were unemployed and the remaining 62.25% were active workers.
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In conclusion, it is necessary to have updated and real information on gamete donors in order to decide whether or not to undergo an assisted reproduction technique involving them.

From here, we would also like to encourage other Assisted Reproduction professionals to share their data and thus collaborate to support the decision of potential recipients with real and reliable information, free of prejudices and stereotypes.