“Gregg Wiatt was stunned. On his 28th birthday—six months before the death of the man he had thought was his natural father—his mother told him the truth. She told him he was the offspring of a semen...

“Gregg Wiatt was stunned. On his 28th birthday—six months before the death of the man he had thought was his natural father—his mother told him the truth. She told him he was the offspring of a semen donor. Long before, though, Wiatt had felt somehow different. ‘It was like there was always this secret I could never put my fingers on,’ says the 37-year-old Denver sales and marketing executive. ‘When I finally learned the truth, it felt like I was living between Disneyland and the Twilight Zone.’ Bill Cordray, 47, also felt odd. ‘It was something that kept edging into my consciousness,’ says the Salt Lake City architect. He and his dad were ‘so different. My interests were artistic—music, building, creative. So different from everyone else. I felt like a stranger in my family.’ Wiatt and Cordray are among tens of thousands of people literally born out of the hightech merger of egg and sperm. And, like most of the others, they’re still in the dark—because records are confidential (“When Dad’s a Sperm Donor,” 1993). Develop arguments on both sides of the question: Should sperm donor records be confidential?