The Gift is a BBC Radio 4 series, presented by Jenny Kleeman, which looks at the consequences of commercial DNA testing through interviews with real people.
In the latest episode, broadcast on Tuesday 2 June 2026, Jenny looks at DNA testing in France. In France, it is a criminal offence to take an at-home DNA test. It is the only European country that criminalises this practice. However, this hasn’t stopped millions of French people from trying to uncover their genetic make-up.
Jenny talks to Nathalie Jovanovic-Floricourt, a campaigner from DNA Pass, who argues that “all humans have a right to know their genome”. To gain a DNA test in France, it must be authorised by a doctor. For a paternity test, a judge must authorise it. Tests taken without permission can lead to fines.
DNA testing is about much more than finding ancestors. Jenny speaks to Audrey and Arthur, a French couple who were both born from sperm donors in Paris. As the 1994 law doesn’t allow for the identity of sperm donors to be revealed, even after their death, there was no legal way for Audrey and Arthur to know who their biological fathers were. “When you don’t know who your donor is, you can imagine he is everybody,” says Arthur. “It is impossible to live like this”. Despite being conceived in 1979, before the laws were in place, Audrey was unable to access any of her donor’s information.
When the couple met for the first time in Paris, there was immediate connection between them. However, as there had only been two sperm banks in Paris at the time of their births, there was the frightening possibility that they were half siblings. But they could not find the truth without breaking the law. Faced with few options, the couple managed to find a doctor in the south of France who would DNA test them for a sum of €900. Despite the doctor telling them they were not genetically related, they were not convinced they could entirely trust him. When Audrey got pregnant, she carried out enquiries through her gynaecologist, who found out that their donors had different birth-years, so they couldn’t be the same person. The couple finally took at-home DNA tests in 2017.
Through the test Arthur discovered his biological father, Gerard, had lived just 150km from him. Audrey found out one of her clients had been a half-sister. Aware that some doctors of sperm banks had used their own sperm, there was a chance the doctor would be her biological father. However, a match to an American genealogist led Audrey to her donor father, Philip, who had been an actor in Paris. Although Philip had passed away, Audrey was able to meet his younger sister and learn the family’s medical history. Audrey’s mother wrote a letter to Philip’s family to thank him for his “immeasurable gift” that allowed her to become a mother and a grandmother. For Audrey, taking this DNA test has been “an enormous blessing”.
Nathalie believes that a change in French law is necessary and inevitable. She estimates that two million French people have already tested their DNA, despite these laws being in place. Whilst there have been some changes, with people conceived after April 2025 now having the right to know who their donor is, at-home DNA testing remains forbidden.
All episodes of The Gift are streaming now on BBC Sounds.