It was the perfect, joyous advert for a Government-backed scheme linking the children of sperm donors – two daughters of the same man meeting for the first time.

But in a terrible mistake that casts new doubt on DNA profiling, it turns out they weren’t related at all...

The embrace was as heart-warming as it was remarkable. Two women from opposite ends of the globe became the first British children of an anonymous sperm donor to meet face-to-face.

Keeley Hall, from Perth, Western Australia, and Elizabeth Howard, from Cambridge, had been among the first to register with UK Donor Link, a Government-funded database set up in 2004.

They had been told that their DNA was one of the organisation’s first ‘matches’: they were half-sisters. Overjoyed, they told of the many resemblances between them – their similar eyes and hair, their shared love of languages – and how they already felt like sisters.

But The Mail on Sunday can now reveal that the two women are almost certainly not related at all. In a terrible and distressing mistake, UKDL brought two entirely unrelated women together and told them they were sisters.

Labels: donor conception, United Kingdom

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