[WSJ Health Blog] Can a sperm bank be sued for selling sperm that causes a child to be born with a genetic disease? Yes, a federal judge has ruled. Here’s the opinion.

The case was brought on behalf of a 13-year-old girl with fragile X syndrome, a common inherited form of mental retardation.

While the judge dismissed several claims, he allowed others to move forward; the WSJ’s Law Blog hashes out the legal details.

One interesting legal/medical issue is the way state laws differ — the law in New York, where the sperm bank is located, state law provides companies that traffic in human tissue and the like less protection than a similar law in Pennsylvania, where the girl was conceived.

A case report on the girl was published last year in the American Journal of Genetics Part A.

“We suggest fragile X DNA screening in gamete donor candidates to decrease the chance of fragile X involvement in their offspring,” the authors wrote.