This criticism comes in light of a scandal involving a sperm donor who has potentially passed a cancer-causing gene to 52 children from 37 families in Belgium, raising serious health concerns.

As of May 2025, it was identified that 52 children in Belgium were conceived from the same donor, violating the law that limits sperm donors to a maximum of six families.

The 2007 law aimed to restrict sperm donors to six families, but the implementation of a tracking database to monitor compliance only began in 2021-2022.

Frank Vandenbroucke, the Belgian Minister of Health, has criticized past governments for what he termed 'political negligence' regarding the enforcement of sperm donation regulations.

He emphasized the importance of families knowing whether more than six women have used the same donor, especially since the government has access to that information.

Vandenbroucke mentioned the possibility of a parliamentary commission to investigate the matter, pending the results of a federal internal audit expected after the summer of 2025.

He also stated that government authorities should apologize regarding the sperm donation case that has resulted in at least 67 children conceived across Europe, including those in Belgium.

While he expressed a desire to retroactively update the Fertidata database to reflect the number of families using the same donor, he did not make any firm commitments.

The lack of information sharing between fertility centers prior to 2024 allowed the violation of the six-family limit to occur.

Vandenbroucke deemed the delay in establishing this database as politically irresponsible, given that the law also mandated a system to monitor compliance.

Belgium's Fertidata database, established in 2024, is the first effective system for sharing information among fertility centers, which previously lacked coordination.

The minister expressed interest in potentially retroactively completing the Fertidata database, acknowledging the complexity of the issue.