Not sure I buy the argument here.
May. 19th, 2005 01:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
It'd require me to buy into a lot more of that "genetics is all-important" stuff I don't like.
Who's Your Daddy?
By DAVID PLOTZ
Washington
TWENTY-FIVE years ago, a peculiar little sperm bank called the Repository for Germinal Choice began offering its product - the seed of Nobel Prize winners and other outstanding men - to the public. The "Nobel Prize sperm bank" was jeered for its elitism and self-importance. Some critics proposed that the government ban it. But clients were undeterred. Women from across the country inundated the sperm bank, in Southern California, with applications for its special sperm.
These women weren't interested just in how smart the donors were, but in how much the repository was saying about them. At the time, most banks revealed little about their donors besides eye color and blood type. But the repository published a whole catalog, detailing each man's personality quirks, looks, accomplishments and - most important - health history.
It was a revelation. From then on, women shopped for sperm. They, not their doctors, decided what kind of donor they wanted. They were no longer patients. They became customers.
This history helps explain why the Food and Drug Administration's effort to ban gay sperm donors is so misguided. New F.D.A. safety and screening standards for sperm banks, which take effect next Wednesday, include strict requirements for testing and retesting donors for H.I.V. But the F.D.A. has also published an accompanying "guidance" document advising banks to bar as donors men who have had sex with other men in the last five years, on the grounds that these men are at high risk for H.I.V. Though the guidance doesn't carry the force of regulation, many sperm banks have indicated that they will follow it. Gay groups including the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and Human Rights Campaign have protested, but so far in vain.
This is a case of government trying to solve a problem that no longer exists - because the free market already solved it.
As the Nobel sperm bank showed, consumer choice is an incredibly powerful force for improving practices. Customers insist on safety and health, and banks compete vigorously to satisfy them. Banks have replaced fresh sperm with frozen, in order to have time to quarantine the sperm and retest the donor for H.I.V. They screen not only for H.I.V., but also for gonorrhea, syphilis, hepatitis and sexually transmitted diseases that most of us have never heard of. Sperm banks force donors to pass a panel of genetic tests for cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs disease, Fanconi anemia and other awful abnormalities. Banks take exhaustive medical histories, perform elaborate personality tests and require high standards of personal behavior. At California Cryobank, America's leading sperm collector, less than 5 percent of donor applicants make the cut. I would bet that the pool of American sperm donors - which includes gay donors who have passed all of these screens - is smarter, healthier, cleaner-living and freer of dread genetic defects than perhaps any group of men on earth.
With its late and largely unnecessary obsession with sperm safety, the government is missing the real issue in the sperm bank world: donor anonymity. Thousands of Americans are born every year without the right to know who their father is.
Our tradition of donor anonymity dates back more than a century and was formalized in recent decades by court decisions and state law. Until a few years ago, it was assumed that children conceived by donor insemination would live with a father, and that father would - following the advice of the time - pretend he was the child's biological father. But today the psychological advice has changed: many parents now tell children who are the result of donor sperm where they came from. And a growing number of sperm bank customers are single women and lesbian couples. In these families, there is no paternal secret to protect. In an age of genetic determinism, many of the children are haunted by the fact that they can't know half of their genetic heritage, and thus half of themselves. Hardly a week goes by that I am not contacted by an adult child of donor insemination seeking to find his donor father. Because the law is arrayed against them, these quests for identity are usually hopeless, and heartbreaking.
Several European countries, including Britain and the Netherlands, recently banned anonymous sperm donations and established donor registries. When donor-insemination children born today in those countries reach age 18, they will be able to look up their fathers in the national registry and seek them out.
The move to end donor anonymity is still small in the United States - it lags far behind the similar effort to open adoption records - but it will grow as the huge current generation of donor-insemination children reaches adulthood. So far, the federal government has shown not even the vaguest interest in the issue, which is a shame, because government is the only force that can really help. It will take federal government action to establish a national registry and to reduce the barriers such children face when seeking their fathers. I don't know whether they all should have the right to know their donor fathers - it's a terribly complicated issue - but I do know it's a public policy question that lawmakers should be considering. And it certainly deserves more thought than a pointless ban on gay donors.
Who's Your Daddy?
By DAVID PLOTZ
Washington
TWENTY-FIVE years ago, a peculiar little sperm bank called the Repository for Germinal Choice began offering its product - the seed of Nobel Prize winners and other outstanding men - to the public. The "Nobel Prize sperm bank" was jeered for its elitism and self-importance. Some critics proposed that the government ban it. But clients were undeterred. Women from across the country inundated the sperm bank, in Southern California, with applications for its special sperm.
These women weren't interested just in how smart the donors were, but in how much the repository was saying about them. At the time, most banks revealed little about their donors besides eye color and blood type. But the repository published a whole catalog, detailing each man's personality quirks, looks, accomplishments and - most important - health history.
It was a revelation. From then on, women shopped for sperm. They, not their doctors, decided what kind of donor they wanted. They were no longer patients. They became customers.
This history helps explain why the Food and Drug Administration's effort to ban gay sperm donors is so misguided. New F.D.A. safety and screening standards for sperm banks, which take effect next Wednesday, include strict requirements for testing and retesting donors for H.I.V. But the F.D.A. has also published an accompanying "guidance" document advising banks to bar as donors men who have had sex with other men in the last five years, on the grounds that these men are at high risk for H.I.V. Though the guidance doesn't carry the force of regulation, many sperm banks have indicated that they will follow it. Gay groups including the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and Human Rights Campaign have protested, but so far in vain.
This is a case of government trying to solve a problem that no longer exists - because the free market already solved it.
As the Nobel sperm bank showed, consumer choice is an incredibly powerful force for improving practices. Customers insist on safety and health, and banks compete vigorously to satisfy them. Banks have replaced fresh sperm with frozen, in order to have time to quarantine the sperm and retest the donor for H.I.V. They screen not only for H.I.V., but also for gonorrhea, syphilis, hepatitis and sexually transmitted diseases that most of us have never heard of. Sperm banks force donors to pass a panel of genetic tests for cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs disease, Fanconi anemia and other awful abnormalities. Banks take exhaustive medical histories, perform elaborate personality tests and require high standards of personal behavior. At California Cryobank, America's leading sperm collector, less than 5 percent of donor applicants make the cut. I would bet that the pool of American sperm donors - which includes gay donors who have passed all of these screens - is smarter, healthier, cleaner-living and freer of dread genetic defects than perhaps any group of men on earth.
With its late and largely unnecessary obsession with sperm safety, the government is missing the real issue in the sperm bank world: donor anonymity. Thousands of Americans are born every year without the right to know who their father is.
Our tradition of donor anonymity dates back more than a century and was formalized in recent decades by court decisions and state law. Until a few years ago, it was assumed that children conceived by donor insemination would live with a father, and that father would - following the advice of the time - pretend he was the child's biological father. But today the psychological advice has changed: many parents now tell children who are the result of donor sperm where they came from. And a growing number of sperm bank customers are single women and lesbian couples. In these families, there is no paternal secret to protect. In an age of genetic determinism, many of the children are haunted by the fact that they can't know half of their genetic heritage, and thus half of themselves. Hardly a week goes by that I am not contacted by an adult child of donor insemination seeking to find his donor father. Because the law is arrayed against them, these quests for identity are usually hopeless, and heartbreaking.
Several European countries, including Britain and the Netherlands, recently banned anonymous sperm donations and established donor registries. When donor-insemination children born today in those countries reach age 18, they will be able to look up their fathers in the national registry and seek them out.
The move to end donor anonymity is still small in the United States - it lags far behind the similar effort to open adoption records - but it will grow as the huge current generation of donor-insemination children reaches adulthood. So far, the federal government has shown not even the vaguest interest in the issue, which is a shame, because government is the only force that can really help. It will take federal government action to establish a national registry and to reduce the barriers such children face when seeking their fathers. I don't know whether they all should have the right to know their donor fathers - it's a terribly complicated issue - but I do know it's a public policy question that lawmakers should be considering. And it certainly deserves more thought than a pointless ban on gay donors.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-05-19 01:24 am (UTC)This weekend I will meet my half-sister. She was given up for adoption, and we were only able to contact her because New York recently started a registry for adoptive children and parents who were looking for each other. She's an adult with children of her own, one almost my age. She's never been a part of my life, although I've known about her for most of my life. She only learned of my existence last year.
But it means something. I am very much looking forward to meeting her. Sometimes things are just about accepting being human. There is no earthly reason why a genetic link should really matter, but it does. And I accept my humanity. I accept my totally irrational desire to have children of my own. I accept that I love my lothario, even though love certainly makes no sense. I don't think everything needs to be completely understood to be a valid argument. A large number of people just are this way.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-19 07:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-19 01:24 am (UTC)This weekend I will meet my half-sister. She was given up for adoption, and we were only able to contact her because New York recently started a registry for adoptive children and parents who were looking for each other. She's an adult with children of her own, one almost my age. She's never been a part of my life, although I've known about her for most of my life. She only learned of my existence last year.
But it means something. I am very much looking forward to meeting her. Sometimes things are just about accepting being human. There is no earthly reason why a genetic link should really matter, but it does. And I accept my humanity. I accept my totally irrational desire to have children of my own. I accept that I love my lothario, even though love certainly makes no sense. I don't think everything needs to be completely understood to be a valid argument. A large number of people just are this way.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-19 07:46 am (UTC)