Jonathan Meijer, a prolific sperm donor, has strongly criticized the portrayal of him in Netflix’s latest docuseries and announced he is preparing a slander suit.
Released Wednesday, “The Man With 1000 Kids” features interviews with various couples and individual women who discovered that their sperm donor, Meijer, had fathered hundreds of children worldwide through multiple sperm banks and private donations. This raises concerns about the risk of inbreeding among half-siblings who may be unaware of their relationships.
Meijer, who did not participate in the docuseries, claims he has fathered approximately 550 children, not the 1,000 suggested by the title. However, the documentary alleges he lied to many families about the number of offspring he produced.
Responding to the docuseries online, Meijer said in a YouTube video last week that when he first began donating, he did inform families of the exact number of children he had helped create. But he later chose to stop giving out the real estimate.
“Technically I did not lie,” Meijer told NBC News in an email Monday. I followed the guidelines of every large commercial international sperm bank that does not inform the recipients about the amount of offspring one donor will produce,” Meijer wrote, adding, “I was doing a much better thing, I gave the parents an estimated number, this was better and more info than they would ever get at any clinic.
Eve Wiley, a fertility fraud activist who Meijer said has “nothing to do with [him],” estimated in the show that Meijer could have fathered thousands of children, depending on how many straws of his sperm were successfully used.
Source: nbcnews.com
