Artificial insemination by donors: the need for genetic screening: late-infantile GM2-gangliosidosis resulting from this technique.

ARTIFICIAL insemination by donor has become a widely accepted method to induce pregnancy for infertile couples and to decrease the risk of inherited diseases. With increasing use of this method, however, some infants with genetic diseases will be born from such pregnancies. The only recent study1 of practices and policies in donor insemination concluded that donors of semen were screened only superficially for genetic diseases, although 26 per cent of physicians practicing donor insemination used the procedure to prevent transmission of a genetic disease. The GM2-gangliosidoses are recessively inherited deficiencies of the enzyme beta-D-Ɲ-acetylhexosaminidase2; in these disorders, . . .