Chapitre 5. Tracing the family accounts? Law, biology and family identity

Resumen

Commenting on the proposals to end sperm donor anonymity in the United Kingdom, Jennie Bristow has recently observed: “In fact, the very notion that one should treat the disclosure of biological origins to one’s child in the same way as one treats company accounts or parliamentary debates is nothing short of bizarre.” (http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/ 0000000CA363.htm) – Accessed 21 Jan.2004)
The comment points to the fact that we are dealing with raw human emotions when we reunite young adults with their biological parents, in the event that they have not known them for one reason or another. Yet it might almost be suggested that the reverse to Bristow’s comment is now in train, whereby it is easier to trace one’s biological origins than it is to trace the precise basis to major corporate appointments, to salary packages, to severances, and to the myriad ‘deals’ that go on behind the corporate veil daily. Why might it be easier to trace biological origins than corporate dealings? In part this is due to DNA and the remarkable power of DNA to alert us to our biological relations. In part this is also the product of social policy that prefers to ‘compensate’ its corporate executives in private – even when they fail to deliver the corporate goods – and to make its sperm donors pay in public. Caught in the middle are children lost or captured in war, conflict and military dictatorship – children for whom biological transparency brings no real accountability – but who often seek to know their true biological origins after the conflict has ended. The ethical and legal situation of that ‘lost generation’ – and attempts to assist them through the science of genetics – is the subject of our paper.