The New "Check Box" That Needs to Be On Pediatrician's Forms

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Pediatricians gather a multitude of information, including insurance, addresses, and phone numbers. Current pediatric intake forms may also ask other questions including the type of birth, APGAR scores, immunizations, hospitalizations, blood type and formula type (even whether breast fed or not). And most importantly, doctors ask for the medical history of the child, as well as a family health history.

But what if the child being treated has no access to one half of their family medical history and family tree?

With this type of detail being requested, it would seem appropriate to also ask in the Family Medical History section whether a child had been donor conceived so that the caregiver could be cognizant of the fact that the child's family medical health history was only half complete. While some parents do initially receive a donor profile, which includes a self-reported medical page, this is only a snapshot of one day in the life of a young and healthy donor and may, or may not, include accurate information.

The U.S. Surgeon General's Office, acknowledging the importance of knowing about one's family health history, created the Family Health History Initiative::

Health care professionals have known for a long time that common diseases - heart disease, cancer, and diabetes - and rare diseases - like hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, and sickle cell anemia - can run in families. If one generation of a family has high blood pressure, it is not unusual for the next generation to have similarly high blood pressure. Tracing the illnesses suffered by your parents, grandparents, and other genetic relatives can help your doctor predict the disorders to which you may be at risk and take action to keep you and your family healthy.

Wouldn't pediatricians want to know about a child's origins for preventive care and especially if a hard to diagnose or serious condition arose?

It's time to start being more proactive in an environment of unregulated sperm banks and egg clinics, and the reproductive medicine industry in general, which has buried its proverbial head in the sand when it comes to medical disclosure. A myriad of preventable conditions, both minor and major have emerged in donor conceived infants, toddlers, children and adults (many who are in large half-sibling groups, sharing the same donor), with no regulation on the sharing of this information which is vital to the care of the resulting child. As sperm donors can father more than 150 children, a genetic condition can be passed along to many more donor conceived children than to children in a traditional family. The new egg banks may also be heading in the direction of creating many children to one single egg donor.

Parents would understandably want their pediatrician to have at least a cursory view of their child's complete medical family history (or know about the lack thereof), and preferably a full genetics screening panel. And yet, the pediatricians, even in this day and age, do not routinely ask if the child is donor conceived, even with the protection of patient privacy that already exists in their practices.

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