Kiwi helps identify serial sperm donor
A Wellington fisheries scientist has been hailed as a hero for helping an American lawyer find the identity of her father, a serial sperm donor who potentially fathered hundreds.
The unlikely connection began in 1975 when New Yorker Patricia Issberner, then 10, received two bombshells: her parents were divorcing, and she had been conceived using artificial insemination.
She knew nothing about her ‘‘real’’ dad, except he was a sperm donor and studied medicine.
Curious about her ethnic background and any genetic medical issues, she joined ‘‘donor offspring’’ support groups. She took a DNA test and uploaded the data to genealogy websites. Eventually, she tracked down eight halfsiblings.
Last September she contacted relatives around the world, looking for more clues. One was the stepmother of Wellington scientist and amateur genetic genealogist Patrick Cordue, who later found he was also distantly related to Issberner.
Moved by her quest, he volunteered his skills. ‘‘I can only imagine what that’s like – most people know who their parents are,’’ he said.
By March, through ‘‘hard work and some good luck’’, Cordue had found another half-sister of Issberner, with a DNA test confirming they shared the same father. But crucially, unlike Issberner and her other siblings, she knew who he was.
The news was bittersweet. The woman told Issberner their father had died decades ago, aged only 51. He was survived by his wife and their two children: the unnamed woman, and her brother.
Her father’s widow said he had made about 800 paid sperm donations to put himself through medical school. He told a cousin he was a favourite with clinics for being unusually fertile, and had possibly fathered hundreds of children.
‘‘I am sad I cannot know him, or why he donated so much. He led a complicated life, much like my own,’’ Issberner said.
‘‘He used his sperm for money with no thought of the children he would produce, or their futures.’’
But overall Issberner, who grew up an only child, was relieved. She described Cordue as a ‘‘hero’’ for the way he used his mathematical, statistical and scientific expertise to make optimal use of online DNA matching.
‘‘Answers. Finally . . . We are so lucky, as so many will never know . . .’’
She felt strongly about the right of ‘‘donor offspring’’ to information about their biological fathers. ‘‘We did not enter into this ‘contract’ of anonymous medical information.’’
Former government fisheries scientist Cordue, 54, a married father of two and member of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists, has researched family trees for about 20 years.
He will travel to New York in July to meet Issberner, and some of her new-found family.
Learning the identity of her ‘‘real’’ father was a mixed blessing, Issberner said. Her half-sister described her father, who became a successful psychiatrist, as funny, charming and goodlooking.
But she revealed he also struggled with depression.
‘‘He died young and unhappy, and we wonder if the gene followed us through our lives,’’ Issberner said. ‘‘We pick apart ourselves and wonder. We wish we had a chance to say something.’’