confidentiality in gamete donation

during recent decades, the third person intervention in human artificial insemination has created new hopes for infertile couples. however these new progresses have propounded new ethical and legal concerns for families. one of them is confidentiality regarding gamete donor's identity, and its disclosure to the future child and others. of course, negligence to this ethical issue would produce a big barrier for efficient health care services. for compiling this article we searched different websites including pubmed, ovid, elsevier, google and etc and the resulting articles were investigated carefully. in this article, the history of gamete donation in different countries is reviewed initially and the mentioned reasons for anonymity with that of disclosure are compared. because of the different cultures and values of various societies, it is not justifiable to propose a unique method regarding this issue; however, there have to be clear rules in this regard, in each country. in order to facilitate this process, pretreatment counseling courses should be established to explain different aspects of this issue for the recipients.