ABSTRACT
The practice of AID in the UK is shrouded in secrecy and silence. There are no official figures on the extent of AID provision;1 no controls exist on the selection of sperm donors, of couples for treatment, on record keeping, or the maintenance of sperm banks, all of which are currently matters of good practice for the agency concerned. The couples themselves tend to keep their recourse to the treatment a secret even from the child, and they tend to conceal the true facts of conception from the register of births by entering the woman’s partner as father.2 Similarly, the anonymity of the donor is carefully maintained, and those professionals who practise AID regard themselves as obliged to maintain its use as confidential, to the extent of concealing the mode of conception from the mother’s medical notes.3
