Donor insemination: the secret experiment

This paper gives an overview of the research that has been done into people created by donor insemination (DI) (note 1), shows how the secretive way DI is carried out makes objective knowledge of their situation impossible to obtain and describes how doctors support this secrecy. It argues that DI is a social experiment whose potential justifications are implicit theories that have either been falsified or are unfalsifiable, and that consequently DI is conducted unscientifically and unethically. In conclusion, it questions the integrity of the industry and the institutions that support it, and considers where we should go from here.