Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Sat 10 Dec 2005 14:06 Post subject: BRAVE NEW WORLD: THE MARKET OF GENES
Hi,
Will genetics, race and heredity become part of the common goods we buy in the market place? It's possible.
At least there is a growing market of genetics in the fertility bussines.
Let's tale a look.
Regards,
Omar Vega
Quote:
Global sperm trade a fertile business
- G. Pascal Zachary, WALL STREET JOURNAL
Friday, January 7, 2000
LONDON - Mark Russell, chief executive of the Bridge Center fertility clinic here, rummages through a file folder: Two of his clients, a couple, are requesting a sperm donor with blue eyes. But Russell can't find one in Britain.
"There's a very big shortage of blue-eyed donors," he says, pulling out a dozen brochures from foreign sperm banks. He settles on one from a sperm bank in Denmark, which he knows has plenty of what he wants. He can order electronically but prefers to telephone because it gives him a chance to ask the Danish sperm banker whether he needs any British-made sperm.
Welcome to the global sperm trade. Economic mysteries are rarely sexy, but consider this one: Every country has plenty of domestic sources of human sperm. So why are so many countries increasingly relying on imports?
Surprisingly, sperm is relatively inexpensive for the purchaser, with a typical month's supply costing from $300 to $400. Exports are a small niche of the global market, worth an estimated $50 million to $100 million. But a few commercial sperm banks have found that the international side of the sperm business is growing fast, thanks to many of the same forces shaping other parts of the world economy.
Technology raises the value of expertise, forcing consolidation. Marketing on the Web intensifies competition by lowering the costs of spreading the word. More products move between nations as consumers become more willing to shop across borders.
For sperm banks, technology plays a major role in the globalization drive. Concern about genetic defects and diseases has led to sophisticated and expensive means of testing donations. The improvements add to the investment required to operate a sperm bank. That, in turn, promotes consolidation: Only those banks that can do large volumes of business think it's worth offering sperm for sale.
The flip side: In many smaller countries, commercial sperm banking has become impractical and uneconomical. Ireland, for instance, relies on imported sperm because local demand cannot support a domestic business.
"There's nobody in Ireland that does sperm donations," says Dr. John O'Keefe, who runs a fertility practice in Dublin. In this largely Roman Catholic country, O'Keefe adds, "it may not be an acceptable thing and there's not enough demand to justify it anyway."
Denmark is sperm king
Historically, Ireland has obtained much of its sperm from neighboring Britain. But sperm donations there have fallen in recent years as the result of tighter government regulations.
Britain and Ireland have now turned to Denmark, which has overcome limits of a small population to become Europe's sperm king. One reason is Denmark's liberal regulations. Danish donors aren't facing threats to their anonymity and may produce 25 live births each - 15 more than the number allowed donors in Britain, for example. Because of careful screening, Danish sperm has a reputation for being high quality, biologically speaking, fueling demand.
Aggressive marketing by Denmark's leading sperm bank no doubt has played a role, too.
"We think we can be the McDonald's of sperm," says Ole Schou, chief of Danish sperm bank Cryos International Sperm Bank Ltd. The nation's high concentration of blond, blue-eyed donors could even make branding possible, Schou says.
Cryos dominates the Scandinavian market from its headquarters in Aarhus, Denmark. In the early 1990s, the company began looking abroad for ways to expand its business and now exports to 25 countries, including Australia, Eastern Europe and the United States. It markets three grades of sperm, including an "Extra" grade, which contains twice as many sperm as the standard grade and exhibits the highest levels of motility, a measure of sperm's ability to reach its target.
Schou thinks Danish sperm can win a following in the United States, the world's biggest sperm market and among the most open. The U.S. government doesn't yet regulate imports, exports or domestic collection.
Competing with U.S. difficult
Cryos's sperm generally costs less than U.S. varieties, Schou says. Still, it may find competing with U.S. rivals difficult. The major reason is that U.S. sperm banks are far more willing than Cryos and other overseas counterparts to reveal donor information.
Xytex Corp., based in Augusta, Ga., will provide clients not only with photos of the donor and the offspring he's helped produce, but also with detailed biographical and physical information, including re
ligion and educational background.
With seven satellite banks operating in the United States from South Carolina to San Francisco, Xytex has another important advantage: steady access to donors of a variety of ethnic backgrounds, including Asians and African Americans. That's important, because customers usually have a preference. By contrast, Cryos relies on three collection points in Denmark, ensuring that most of its donors will be white and of European descent.
Cryos and Xytex tried and failed to forge a global alliance about a year ago, but the deal foundered on the Americans' insistence that the Danes shine more light on their donors. Cryos offers no pictures of donors and scant information such as blood type and race.
Schou won't get on the phone with prying customers. "American patients want to know everything about the donor," he says.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Sat 10 Dec 2005 14:19 Post subject: MARKET OF VIKING BABIES
Denmark finds eager U.S. market for “Viking babies”
By JAMIE TALAN
Newsday
At 5-foot-11, Arnt has straight blond hair and blue eyes. He swims, runs, skis on water and snow, and works out. A law student, the 28-year-old describes himself as easy-going, a creative perfectionist with a good wit, an extrovert.
He’s not advertising for a girlfriend. His sperm is for sale.
Arnt is one of 50 men from Denmark whose sperm sits in one of three metal vats in Manhattan, waiting for a couple or a single mother desperate for a baby. In this case, a Viking baby.
The company, Scandinavian Cryobank, has been in business in Denmark for almost two decades. It takes credit for 10,000 babies worldwide. Two years ago, the company opened a New York office and began marketing Scandinavian sperm to infertility doctors and their patients with a sleek albeit controversial slogan: “Congratulations, it’s a Viking!”
Another advertisement shows a blond, blue-eyed baby and talks about his ancestors who beat Columbus to North America. “You’d better build a strong crib,” the ad boasts.
While some think pursuing the fantasy of a near-perfect child smacks of eugenics, Americans are finding ways to attempt to give birth to designer babies — whether through sperm from blond-haired, blue-eyed athletic Danes or by taking ads out in Ivy League college newspapers looking for an egg donor with high SAT scores and varsity team record.
The freedom to choose the kind of child one wants, as opposed to a child who perhaps more closely resembles oneself, could create “consumer eugenics,” said Jonathan Moreno, an endowed professor of biomedical ethics at the University of Virginia. “We have cultural stereotypes. Blue eyes, light skin and height are valued. It would be a historic irony if we all ended up looking like that.”
It’s not clear how many people are opting to create Viking babies. The company provides international statistics only.
About 5 million people in the United States are infertile, and half seek treatment to have a baby. Donor eggs are used by about 10 percent of couples in treatment.
By law, the use of donor eggs, which cannot be frozen, is reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While there are strict guidelines for screening the health of donor sperm, there are no government mechanisms to track actual use of the sperm, which can be frozen and stored for decades.
Scandinavian Cryobank says it is the first international sperm seller in the United States. Claus Rodgaard is the manager and chief executive of the company’s two-person Manhattan office. He smiles up at blond, blue-eyed babies in oversized photos on the walls who look, well, just like him.
“They are just so damn cute,” he said.
Rodgaard said a person’s choice in a sperm donor is just as personal as his or her attraction to a life partner.
“I don’t think it is an ethical debate at all,” he said. “It is not much different than falling in love. There are thousands of donors in the world and it is more like natural selection. People shop around and look through donor lists to find someone that appeals to them. It really is so much like real life. It reflects who we are as humans.
“You meet someone. You want to know all about them. Can he cook? Is he sweet? Does he come from a healthy family?”
Scandinavian Cryobank sells sperm in 40 countries, charging the U.S. equivalent of $275 for one injection of potent sperm delivered in a sealed plastic straw. On average, across all age groups, it can take up to 13 straws to conceive a child.
In Denmark, there are 250 donors. Some begin donating in their 20s; the cutoff age is 40. The average donor continues in the program for five years, and can provide sperm several times a week. They get about $80 a straw.
If their sperm doesn’t sell, they are removed from the donor pool, Rodgaard said. He added that each donor, on average, is responsible for conceiving 20 to 30 babies throughout the world.
The classic Danish look — tall, slender and athletic with soft facial features, light skin, small nose, blue eyes, fair hair — is the draw, Rodgaard said. Many donors have blond hair, but an equal number have light brown hair. “Redheads aren’t big sellers,” he added.
While the company charges one price for all its donors, several U.S. companies charge more for sperm from a donor with a post-doctoral, medical or legal degree.
“Companies are putting a price on what someone does for a living,” said Dr. Daniel Kenigsberg, director of Long Island IVF. “That’s absurd.”
“What is needed is a healthy donor,” said Dr. Jamie Grifo, director of reproductive endocrinology at New York University Medical Center. “There’s no evidence that because some guy made it through college that his offspring will.”
Health remains a key issue. Scandinavian Cryobank keeps track of genetic malformations and in 2004 reported seven potential problems internationally. Most of the donors were disqualified.
The company also tracks the donor history to ensure one man’s genes aren’t being spread too often in a particular region of the world.
That sperm banks are now expanding the information on their donors to include everything from physical traits to personality and temperament raises issues that infertility specialists and ethicists say must be addressed.
“It’s one thing to chose Danish sperm because that is what the men in your family are like,” Kenigsberg said. “That would be an appropriate sperm donor. But what if the family characteristics are entirely different? There is something creepy about this when people are attempting to have children who are so different from what they are like.”
“And what if the child doesn’t grow into the Viking he or she is intended to be?” added Dr. Robert Klitzman, co-director of Columbia University’s Center for Bioethics and author of “Moral Secrets: Truth and Lies in the Age of AIDS.”
Both Klitzman and Kenigsberg believe that people have the right to identify preferable genetic characteristics and choose from a gene pool close to their ideal.
“But as all parents know, there are no guarantees. An athlete can have a child who is an artist,” Kenigsberg said. “A brilliant parent can have a child of average intelligence. We can all have children who are handicapped. There shouldn’t be an implication that the use of a particular sperm donor will deliver offspring who are superior.”
In Denmark, the only information that can be doled out to clients is the height and weight of the donor, Rodgaard said. But at the U.S. office of Scandinavian Cryobank, parents-to-be can receive an extensive three-page profile of any of its donors.
They get to know a donor’s resting heart rate, skin tone, hair texture, handedness, shoe size, academic history, favorite life moments, saddest moments, favorite color, eating habits and how much sleep he requires.
Personality has its own section, including temperament, the quality of close relationships and characteristics that define who they are. Then, of course, a detailed health history, including genetic diseases.
Columbia’s Klitzman worries about the ultimate impact on the children, who might grow up to believe that they were selected to be something, or someone, they are not.
Wisconsin’s Charo agrees. When she was touring sperm banks, she envisioned what her life would have been like had her father not been short and pot-bellied, or had she not inherited strabismus (crossed eyes) from her mother’s family.
“But these characteristics were part of a larger package,” she says. “As soon as you commercialize people, you either select them or reject them outright.”
In her late 20s, the ethicist signed on to be a surrogate mother. “I never made it past the paperwork,” said Charo, who describes herself as short and plump. “They never even called. It was sobering. I had no commercial appeal.”
Normal genetic variation is complex, she said. “People may want to avoid early Alzheimer’s, which is inherited. But there is so much that falls in the middle, a mix of genetics and environment, that it would be impossible to predict how a person will turn out.”
What’s more, she said, blond hair and blue eyes are genetically recessive traits, which means that an American woman with brown hair and brown eyes will have only a 50 percent chance of having a fair-haired Viking child — even though she used Danish sperm.
January 08, 2003
The Growing Market For Donor Eggs
The first article cites the example of ads run in a student newspaper offering Stanford female students $50,000 for egg donation.
The use of egg donors is increasing at nearly 20 percent annually, as more women delay childbearing to the point where their own eggs are in trouble. (If human cloning, which relies on ripe eggs, becomes a reality, it will call for even more donors.) Though some years off, new technology might help. Scientists are finding ways to ripen eggs in test tubes rather than in women's bodies, eliminating the risk of ovary-stimulating drugs. And frozen egg technology will enable women to store their own eggs for later use–rather than look to vulnerable students in search of tuition payments.
This article doesn't explain why most egg sources are cheaper than the Stanford example.
In the United States, prices vary greatly from clinic to clinic, but you should expect to pay between $15,000 and $20,000 for one donor egg or embryo in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycle. This includes the cost of compensation for the donor (usually about $5,000) and one cycle of IVF (usually between $12,000 and $17,000). If your insurance policy doesn't cover this treatment, you'll have to pay the entire cost up front.
Someone who was considering using donor eggs who looked into this market tells me there is a large price premium on higher IQ donor eggs. It is not a coincidence that the advertisement offering such a high price for donor eggs was run in a Stanford newspaper. In order to get into Stanford one has to be exceptionally bright. The Ivy League students get higher price offers to be egg donors as well. The growing use of donor eggs is driving up the price. That $50,000 price is literally a multiple of what it was a few years ago for top quality eggs.
Donor eggs are not a panacea for aging women. Their bodies are less able to support a pregnancy.
However, these successful pregnancies do not come risk free for older women. Even among women in their 50s who had passed a rigorous physical, the study found a 20 percent risk of gestational or pregnancy induced diabetes and a 35 percent risk of preeclampsia or pregnancy related high blood pressure.
The use of donor eggs is not always reported as such.
They make it look easy -- the celebrities who are regularly featured on tabloid covers, appearing to have almost effortlessly had a baby or two when they're beyond their 20s or 30s.
"These are women who are in their 40s, often late 40s, and the tabloids are saying they just had twins. And what they don't say is that these women used donor eggs," says Dr. Michael P. Diamond, director of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Wayne State University, Detroit Medical Center and Hutzel Hospital.
In the long run technologies for viable creating eggs from cells and the genome of the mother-to-be will be developed. Eventually it will be possible to manipulate adult fully differentiated cells to make them do meiotic cell division to produce eggs. It will even become possible to grow new ovaries from stem cells just as it will become possible to grow other types of replacement organs from stem cells. It is likely that in many cases (depending on each woman's willingness to do so) these techniques will be done in conjunction with gene therapy that fixes any harmful mutations that one doesn't want to pass along to offspring. There will even be gene therapy to modify genetic sequences to produce changes that are enhancements such as higher intelligence or changes in appearance.
By Randall Parker at 2003 January 08 12:30 AM Biotech Reproduction
Comments
Some interesting comments to that article:
THE OFERT
Quote:
I am interested in being an egg donor. I am 25 year old college student. Currently on my 3rd year in college. I have a 3.6 GPA and a 137 IQ. I am 5'8, 140 pounds, blonde hair, green eyes, very athletic, was in choir all through grade school and high school, ran track, volleyball,basketball, cheerleading. I have a great personality. I also am in STD free and I am married with two children. I can furnish photos upon request. There are no genetic diseases in my family.
Posted by: Jamie on September 16, 2004 11:40 AM
THE DEMAND
Quote:
We are seeking an exceptional egg donor; blonde hair, blue eyes, 5'6 through 5'11. Atheletic (sports and likely having won awards) and talented (musical instruments; foreign language skills). We are in Miami, Florida but geography is not important. We are happily married but have a hole in our lives due to infertility issues. Please respond only if a serious potential donor. Please send quality photos, including head and body shot (we want to as closely match you with our ideal characteristics). Thank you for your interest and time!!
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Sun 11 Dec 2005 18:58 Post subject: GENIUS BABIES: The sons of the Nobel Prize winners.
Liana wrote:
This is so funny
What if the donor person turns out to be carrying the proverbial "bad seed" and the kid turns out to be the next Osama Bin Laden
Just kidding
I couldn't resist
This would be a great sci fi screenplay
B
Hi Liana,
Well, it is not sci fi. It is happening right now. Look at the next article. It is about those crazy fellows that are selecting intelligence, buying sperm from a Nobel prize winners sperm bank. In here appear the result and what the victims.... I mean, the kids that were the result of these experiments, thing about it.
Enjoy. This thing is so unbelievable that seems like the plot of a "magic realistic" Latin America writer.
The "Genius Babies" Grow Up
What happened to 15 children from the Nobel Prize sperm bank?
By David Plotz
Posted Wednesday, May 30, 2001, at 12:00 AM ET
Slate's "Seed" project is chronicling the history of the Repository for Germinal Choice, the "Nobel Prize sperm bank" founded by millionaire inventor Robert Graham in the late 1970s. We have been searching for the 200-plus children conceived through the bank, their parents, and the men who donated the sperm for them. The left-hand column on this page displays links to the other 12 articles in the Seed series, including the introduction explaining the project.
Two months ago, a 16-year-old Midwestern boy—let's call him "Jon"—discovered he is not who he thought he was. Jon's mom, "Sarah," informed him that his father was not his biological father and that he was conceived using "genius sperm" from the Repository for Germinal Choice. Jon had been telling his mom that, while he would definitely attend college, he also wanted to enroll in professional wrestling school. She decided he needed to know "he had more potential than that."
Jon wasn't shocked to learn of his Nobel sperm bank origins. Sarah had been intimating for years that Jon shouldn't take his father—a difficult man who's had trouble holding jobs—as a role model. "She had been dropping hints since I was in the sixth grade. She told me I had the potential to do better than him. Once, a few years ago, she said something about how I didn't have to worry about Dad's genes—which is good because he's not the most savory character."
(This family home is surely peculiar at the moment. Jon's father, who isn't around much, doesn't know that Jon has discovered his origins. Jon's younger sister has no inkling that her brother is Nobel sperm bank kid—and that she is, too.)
The idea that he was specially conceived through the repository has galvanized Jon. He scoured the Web for information about the repository and e-mailed Slate to see what we knew. He has researched the repository's history, concluding that founder Robert Graham, who died in 1997, "was pretty much a Nazi," but that the results of his sperm bank—such as himself—weren't so bad.
Is Jon what Graham dreamed of when he built his genius sperm bank? Jon doesn't adore school, but he's still going to graduate a year early. He's "pretty good at math" but not at science. He favors history and English. He likes music, which in his case means rap. (He's writing lyrics for a group that he started with some friends.) He says learning about his genetic head-start has made him concentrate a bit more on school work. "Before I thought I didn't have the potential. Now I think I have got the potential and that I'm just lazy," he says, half-joking.
Jon, in short, is a very typical American teen-ager. His life is slightly more unsettled and his origins are slightly more scenic, but he is not some bizarre Überkid. He is a bright boy, a fine, funny talker, an energetic correspondent. Will he succeed at what he tries? I expect so. Will he be a leader of renown or an inventor of genius or a Nobel Prize-winner? I doubt it, but who knows?—he's only 16.
Jon's biography is echoed in the other repository kids Slate located. They show very much promise, but they are very much children. I have interviewed nine families with 15 children conceived through the repository. (I have also corresponded some with three other families that have four kids and e-mailed cursorily with another child.) These 15—or, counting the brief contacts, 20—kids are a fraction of the entire repository crop of 219 kids. (How did I find them?)
The Slate 15 range in age from 6 to 19, with most falling between 10 and 16. The group consists of eight boys and seven girls. The 15 represent eight different donors, but there is a bizarre bias toward one donor. Seven of the 15 come from Donor Fuchsia. (Click here to read more about this donor and why he might be so popular. The seven Fuchsia kids come from three different families: They don't know each other, but I would be happy to introduce them.)
I know less than I would like to about these children. I have communicated directly with only three of them, all teen-age boys. Parents have provided detailed information to me about the other dozen, but their second-hand—and admittedly biased—accounts lack the vividness of a real interview. Still, it's hard to fault the moms and dads for their reluctance to bare their children to the world. Many of the parents told me they're horrified by the very public life of Doron Blake, the Nobel sperm bank's most famous kid. They recoil at the idea of similarly exposing their darlings. (Click here to read a profile of Doron, one of the three kids I did interview.)
A final, obvious caveat: This is not a representative sample. These families volunteered to speak. I have no idea how the Slate 15 compare to the entire repository group. I also have no way to test these kids for mental acuity or IQ or anything else. What I gathered is anecdote, not data.
So have the "superbabies" grown into superkids? The Slate 15 seem to be an accomplished bunch. Half a dozen parents credit their kids with 4.0 GPAs. Five parents told me that their kids tested at the top of their school and that their school was the best in the area. Are they prodigies? That's harder to know. Doron Blake was touted as a prodigy as a kid: He has grown up to be a very smart but not supernatural college student. The two teen-age girls in the Ramm family—the only other family besides the Blakes that is public—are artistically precocious: one an outstanding singer, the other an outstanding dancer. A 14-year-old out West, "Sam," is touted by his parents as a math-science genius with "Olympic" potential in skiing. A 14-year-old in California, "Gage," is trading stocks and researching international business at a precocious age. Another teen-ager in California, "Jacob," is a musical whiz who is already studying quantum theory.
There's a curious difference between how parents describe sons and daughters. The Slate 15 includes a cluster of five girls between 10 and 13. Their parents give them a very different kind of rave review than the boys' parents do. The girls' parents marvel that their daughters are wonderful yet normal. All are socially well-adjusted, athletic, and enthusiastic, and all are excellent students. They are, as one mom puts it about her daughters, "Renaissance kids."
The overall parental enthusiasm should surprise no one. The parents happiest with the repository are the parents most likely to talk to a reporter and most likely to have high-achieving kids.
Do the children resemble their genetic fathers? Three offspring of Olympic gold medalist Donor Fuchsia are reportedly amazing athletes. Gage shares a love of economics with his donor. Several of the science/math enthusiasts were fathered by science/math professors. Three moms who explicitly chose "happy" donors report that their kids have sunny personalities.
All the Slate 15 are in good health, except one. The Ramm's 9-year-old son Logan—a "most happy, wonderful boy," says his mother Adrienne—has a developmental disability. He acquired it, Adrienne says, after a vaccination in infancy. He does not speak but communicates using a talking computer. Adrienne told me she and her husband hope to learn more about Donor Fuchsia—Logan's biological father—so that they might find clues about Logan's disability. They also want to discover what kind of athlete Fuchsia was, so they can know what sports Logan might excel at.
The Slate 15 aren't placid angels. Doron Blake has been bucking at his mom and resents the genetic expectations placed on him. Gage has rebelled against his very liberal parents. "He feels so powerful, with his intelligence, that sometimes it's as though he's the parent, and my husband and I are the kids. He will NOT be controlled by either of us," writes Gage's mom. (She notes that one of Gage's rebellions has been trying to stop her from smoking marijuana.)
Readers have asked me whether it's nature or nurture that has made the repository kids what they are. The question cannot be answered, even if I could conduct elaborate psychometric surveys on the Slate 15. The repository kids all have hyperinvolved parents. Their moms are constantly enrolling them for music lessons and sports teams. The parents don't seem to be bullies—several explicitly don't push their kids intellectually—but they are incredibly attentive and supportive. As one mom e-mailed, "Both children are the picture of health, quite athletic, which is not a surprise given that they have abundant food, medical care, a safe home, and the opportunity to play. All children would thrive in this environment." Is it their genes or their devoted parents that kick-started them? Probably both.
A dozen of the 15 know they come from the Nobel Prize sperm bank. That makes them unusual: Studies show the vast majority of parents who use sperm banks don't tell their kids. The kids seem unbothered, even blasé, about their origins. Gage says he wasn't very surprised when his mom broke the news: "I have always noticed differences between my dad and me. … His personality is nothing like mine." Many mothers said their kids felt "relief" when they learned dad was not dad. As Jacob's mom put it, "He always knew but he didn't know."
The kids certainly don't credit their genesis with changing them. Most of them were eager students before they knew, and learning about the bank hasn't altered that. Gage, who writes more like a 40-year-old than a 14-year-old, e-mailed me that "the thought that I was genetically engineered to be intelligent might have provided further impetus to my drive to improve my grades, but I do not believe it was the main factor." And the kids don't feel that parents pushed them extra-hard because they are Nobel sperm bank babies. Genetic expectations, it seems, are not so burdensome. (Nor do the kids seem very curious about their genetic fathers and siblings. Click here for why they seem indifferent.)
Many reader correspondents have been prodding me for a final verdict about the repository. I hope it's clear how hopeless it would be to issue a sweeping conclusion based on the Slate 15. My sample is mingy. I have no test scores or personality exams or report cards. Nature and nurture are all tangled up. Statistical judgment is impossible.
But the repository can be measured against its own ambitions. Over the years, Robert Graham announced three goals for his project. At first, he envisioned the repository as a scientific experiment to prove that genes control intelligence. By that standard, the repository flopped. You can't conduct a controlled scientific study about nature and nurture with a self-selecting group of high-achieving families. Did the superstar sperm give the Slate 15 (or the Graham 219) an intelligence boost? Perhaps, but I don't know, and no one else does either.
Graham's second ambition was that his kids would form a cadre of leaders and elite scientists. Here, Slate arrives too soon. The 219 repository kids may grow up to be the essential men and women of the land. They may not. Many have made a stellar start, but they haven't arrived yet. Graham's question goes unanswered.
As Graham aged and mellowed, he settled on a more modest aim. Eventually he viewed the repository as altruism. It would give parents who couldn't have children themselves a chance to have a child that might be healthier, might be smarter, might be more musical. In this Graham is vindicated. The lasting accomplishment of the repository, I suspect (and the Slate 15 suggests), will not be that it has filled the world with genius children, but that it has filled homes with beloved ones.
If you have a connection to the Repository for Germinal Choice—whether as a donor, client, child, or employee—and you would like to share your story anonymously, please contact me by e-mail at plotzd@slate.com or by phone at (202) 862-4889.
Today’s Vikings are an eclectic lot, like their parents. We've dealt with plenty of moms- and dads-to-be, from German-Sudanese couples to Malay-Australian and infinite combinations in between. Parents tell us that their new-wave Vikings still set out on voyages of discovery, often landing at local kindergartens. At Scandinavian Cryobank, we’re proud to have had more than a little to do with such developments.
I'm honestly not sure if the above babies are meant to be examples of the multitudes of different looks these new generation of "Viking babies" can have (i.e. the babies of color are actually biracial with Danish fathers) OR if they're meant to represent the future possibilities of Scandinavian Cryobank branching out to recruit sperm donors of color in addition to white. I think this may be a possibility...
The tan skinned blonde one is indeed obviously mixed IMO. But then again, I have seen biracial children that look just like everyone of these babies. Including the white one.
Including this diversity in advertising decreases (or hopes to) the Nazi conatation I think...
Last edited by zsana on Mon 12 Dec 2005 00:52; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Sun 11 Dec 2005 23:57 Post subject: Is there a fate worse than death for a gamete (egg, sperm)?
oevega, quoting Newsday's JAMIE TALAN wrote:
By law, the use of donor eggs, which cannot be frozen, is reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While there are strict guidelines for screening the health of donor sperm, there are no government mechanisms to track actual use of the sperm, which can be frozen and stored for decades.
Does the notion of a fate worse than death make any sense?
Firstly, we know now that male and female gametes are equal -- they fuse in fertilization, contributing equally to the DNA inheritance of the embryonic new individual. (Medieval male chauvinism had long attributed fanciful, unequal roles in reproduction to men & women. E.g., thinking a "black" man's "white" former wife might keep on producing "black" or Mulatto babies after remarriage to a "white" man, etc. See Tenzer.)\
http://www.multiracial.com/readers/tenzer2.html
What this first principal means is that intelligent donors of both eggs and sperm may have the same concerns, or troubling afterthoughts.
Second, we assume (or we might even insist) that our gametes (egg, sperm) only be used for artificial human insemination, not for weird biological lab experiments planned by, say, a mad scientist named Frankenstein. But property law is such that we have no more power over our given-up gametes than an antebellum planter wishing to protect the fate of the slave he sold (e.g., his own kid).
Therefore, gametes (eggs, sperm) we donate or sell are potential half-humans who happen to be "of us" in the same sense that our children are. Most of our gametes simply die, the same as billions of other cells that our bodies continuously shed. It is unremarkable. Would a thoughtful person contemplating gamete (egg, sperm) donation hope that their gamete might simply die, too, instead of meeting an unhappier fate in the sense of starting a terrible life? What might our own child of life-better-avoided be? How would we feel about our own biological child:
1.) A monster, crossed somehow in Frankenstein's experiment with an animal gamete, to create a hopeless, or suffering abomination? (There was an old 1950s' sci-fi movie along this line. I watched the movie, but now I'm unsure the title.)
2.) A hapless embryo to be infinitely cloned for endless harvesting of organs or stem cells?
3.) A slave owned by, say, a curmudgeon Texas oil tycoon, for spare body parts, or for harvesting stem cells for his rejuvenation?
4.) A slave to be sold into Nigerian bondage or for Asian sexual perversion?
5.) An adopted or surrogate-born child for an unnatural, unstable homosexual "marriage."?
6.) An unhappy "designer child" for an unloving, indifferent or troubling celebrity type? (E.g., Jacko?)
In the socio-biological scheme of life purposed for our procreating (E.O. Wilson), males are more comfortable with promiscuity (or donating sperm). Men are spared ordeals of pregnancy, childbirth, nursing, and the life-threatening or at least taxing burdens of motherhood. As if that weren't enough, male sperm produces lifelong, billions -- effectively infinite in number. No menopause, no lifetime-limit of radiation-susceptible stored eggs. Nature makes women less promiscuously inclined about sex for a reason.
Nonetheless, a thoughtful man should have the same empathy-interest for his own children as their mother has -- his 1/2 genetic contribution to them being equal to her 1/2. In the time of partus sequitur ventrum's hypodescent slavery, many slave-owning fathers evidently responded humanly to their own Mulatto children. (Founded universities for them; & the furiously envied "white privilege" of "house slaves," etc.) However, some "white" men seemed indifferent to their Mulatto children or less caring toward them, maybe by rationalizing that such progeny were not fully persons in the same sense as his legitimate children? We see examples: Thomas Jefferson assisted his children by Sally Hemings (he apparently was behind 1787 Va. statutorily doubling its "white" statutory tolerance, up to 1/4 "black blood"; he manumitted Hemings kids in his will), but far less for them than Jefferson's "white" children got. Recently we learned of late segregationist Senator Strom Thurman's secret Mulatto daughter Essie Mae. To what extent did the deterministic "different races" belief diminish these and many other men's emotional connection to their own children? Might they have had observations, if asked, about the possibility of a fate worse than death for their sperm? In our time class concepts, of bastardy, illegitimacy, or of unwanted pregnancy may make many of us prefer contraception (sperm death) to abortion and abortificants? Some of us may prefer the gamete (egg, sperm) donating and the aborting be done by other people, not us.
George
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Mon 12 Dec 2005 02:53 Post subject: Design Babies
Hi,
Well, I post this controversial issue because it call my attention that reproduction is becoming something regulated by the market laws.
I put the title "Brave New World" because the classic sci-fiction novel of Aldoux Huxley with that name, which predicted a world where children were designed by the state. Besides, this eugenic ideas were part of Hitler's dream so it is something to take into consideration.
It is right that the market regulate the aspect, intelligence and character of future generations?
How much rights have the parents to decide how their kids are going to be?
What will happens if the technology advances and not only infertile people but everyone has the opportunity to "fix" certain genes of their future sons and daughters ? If it is right to fix genes for medical reasons, does it follows that is right to do the same because estetical medicine reasons ?
Finally, if the market laws apply how will mankind be in a couple of thousand years ? Would dark eyes or curly hair dissapear? Would violent people, or squizofrenics a thing of the past? What would happy if all people where extremely intelligent and everyone wanted to be the boss ?
Yes, the number of questions is infinite, and it is not Sci Fi. It is starting to happens right now before our eyes.
'
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