Alisyn Camerota interviews Jill Teitel for documentary

CNN premieres its “Special Report: The Baby Business” on Monday, September 5 at 9PM ET. View the trailer here.  CNN Anchor, Alisyn Camerota, takes a closer look at the difficulties of the booming fertility field.

Baby Business brings to light a cautionary tale about what happens when sperm donors lie about their medical and personal backgrounds.  Since the fertility industry created the path for the misrepresentations and fraud by empowering the system that allowed doctors to impregnate their own patients, the fertility industry should take charge of righting the wrongs. Some cryobanks are still “guaranteeing anonymity” of their donors and perpetuating the outdated beliefs that donors could and should remain completely anonymous despite their own actions causing them to be known. The need for disclosure of certain aspects of a donor’s health record should be assured to protect the donor conceived person. Nothing is as painful as a parent feeling that they should have done more for their child with a genetic condition or disease. Even the possibility that their donor failed to divulge or misrepresented pertinent information about their genetics creates extreme anxiety. Agency and/or cryobank donor vetting is a common sense solution.

Case law and statutory changes, that, we are creating is re-shaping the ART industry’s ethical norms in the hopes of meeting the current needs and expectations of the ART users. In this journey, we are now also responding to the demands of the donor-conceived communities.