Drinking from the Data Well: Response to Gamete donor anonymity and limits on numbers of offspring: the views of three stakeholders

Data matters. Senator Cory Booker’s mantra is ‘in God we trust . . . Everybody else, bring me data’,1 and the federal government’s less catchy term for data-driven law and policy is ‘evidence-based practices’.2 Yet the privatization of familymaking generally— coital and technological—has translated to lack of government record-keeping, leaving scholars, journalists, courts, legislators, and advocates to shape their approaches on nightmare cases of disease and disorder or anecdotes like ads on campuses offering ivy league egg donors $30,000.3 Not surprisingly, these extreme stories can lead to proposals that would increase state intervention reproductive technology. The literature review in Nelson, Hertz, and Kramer’sGamete Donor Anonymity and Limits on Numbers of Offspring: The Views of Three Stakeholders acknowledges existing data collectiononassisted reproduction, studies that tend toofferpatchworkpicturesof different populations at different times and places, answering different questions.Their article represents a marked departure in its attempt to tell a broader story. First, the data set is expansive. It compiles the views and experiences of sizeable population: 325 donors, 2134 parents, and 419 children. The researchers posed a range