Graham, a wealthy' optometrist and .inventor, did not provide this valuable sperm to just any
interested or intelligent female; he believed that only one out of every fifty women was
qualified to bear the children of his Nobelists. The women had to be members of Mensa, an
international society of people who are in the brightest 2 percent of the population,
according to certain IQ tests.
Women began calling or writing to him from all over the world. Scientists who believed they
were geniuses were vying for opportunity to donate sperms, to help produce super kids.
The Repository (which had earned the epithet "notorious") closed its doors two years back.
But then Virginia's Fairfax Cryobank stepped into the breach with its "Fairfax Doctorate
Donors". Since 1999 the firm has been offering, at a third more than usual price, sperm from
Ph.Ds in la'\v, medicine, and other disciplines. Cryos offers three grades of sperm,
including an "extra" version that contains twice the number of highly motile sperm as its
"regular" brand. Sperm banking is now global, like any other consumer product or service.
The Internet has added a new dimension to artificial insemination: the possibility or viewing a
photo of the donor and, in some instances, listening to a tape of his voice. The digital dads
seem more like part of a dating service than a medical clinic. .
Consumers are no longer limited to the small donor pools locally. The Denmark-based Cryo,
for example, is aggressively marketing its product over many countries; it has the avowed
goal of becoming the McDonald's of sperm banking.
As recently as 15 years back, a one-line description of the donor was the industry
standard. Now, a dozen-page medical and family history is typical. Today's sperm
shoppers want to know more than the cause of the donor's maternal grandfather's death or
the shape of his nose. For instance, over 100 sperm banks operating in the United States
offer catalogues with varying' amounfs of background information on available donors, and
thousands of profiles' are available online. Some even offer baby pictures of donors,
current photographs, and la-minute videotape bio, even a donor essay about his interests
and hobbies.
And sperm "sorting" is said to be in common use. The best known technique was initiated
by one doctor, Ronald J. Ericsson. His innovation was to place the sperm over an
albumin-based medium, which has layers of increasing density. The sperm that make it to
the bottom layer are mostly male, those from less dense top layers mostly female. Others
resort to "washing" - enriching it with Y chromosome that significantly increases the
likelihood of getting a boy.
We have a couple of major sperm banks operating in the country. And their production is
said to be enough for meeting the current demand. Yet their donor list remains rather
limited, composed mostly' of medical stu?ents. And donor information as supplied to the
intending recipients still stays quite patchy. Our sperm banks will have to cast a wider net,
such students of IITs, even IAS probationers. And unless they upgrade themselves fast to
meet the increasingly sophisticated demand for donor sperm in the country, sperm banks
from outside with their global reach will infiltrate the home market. Information about their
.offerings is easily accessible on Web sites and sperms can be quickly flown across borders
through mail or couriers.
Actually the screening of men donating sperm is more lax than the screening of bulls
donating sperm in high-grade cattle industry. Bull sperm is frozen and not used for at least
one month after it is collected so that the animal can be monitored to ensure it wasn't
harbouring an undetected infection at the time the sperm was collected. Records are
maintained tracing the health of all offspring of the donor, and the laboratory staff undergoes
periodic tests of their health to limit the risk of transmitting viruses or bacteria to the
samples. No wonder bull sperm sells at five times the price of
human sperm per sample Screening of human donors is often lax. Sperm banks mostly rely
on donor's self-report about family history of disease or a risk lifestyle. A study done at the
University of North Carolina found that a majority of sperm donors (including medical students)
could not recognize genetic problems in their family history to disclose it. And it is
estimated that over one-third of artificial insemination practitioners were still using fresh
rather than frozen sperm - a procedure highly risk-prone in transmission of disease. The
process of artificial insemination is so shrouded in secrecy that few records are kept about
donors.
Indeed the whole field of artificial insemination in the country calls for a tightening up, both
through legislation and self-regulation by the industry.
