Strollerderby : sperm

Woman Plans to Be Impregnated with Dead Lover’s Sperm

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:50:00 GMT

Nabokov wrote, “Eccentricity is greatest grief’s greatest remedy.” This is certainly the case for a Bronx woman whose 31-year-old fiancé died unexpectedly from a heart attack last week. In the wake of her partner’s death, Gisela Marrero found comfort in the possibility that she could harvest his sperm. Marrero and Johnny Quintana had been together for 13 years and already have a two-year-old. According to Marrero, they were planning to have another child.

Marrero’s fight to harvest her lover’s sperm was a race against the clock, as sperm remain fresh for only 36 hours after death and Marrero was required to have a court order okaying the procedure, since she and Quintana were not married. The judge approved of the post mortem sperm extraction with only four hours to spare, so sperm bank employees rushed to the medical center where Quintana’s body was held.

In the midst of the indescribable pain that Marrero must be in, it makes sense that she would jump at the opportunity to keep the man she loved in her life, in any way possible. But, as unimaginable as it surely seems to her now, Marrero could eventually fall in love with someone who would love to be the father to her second child, making life much easier for this unborn child. I’m certainly not against artificial insemination for single women, but bringing a baby into the world so that the memory of his father can live on is, in my opinion, too much burden to place on a child.

Marrero claims that having another child was Quintana's wish and is the "last thing I can do for him." But having a child while alive and becoming a father after death are two entirely separate things. There's no way to know what Quintana, who was not expecting to die so young, would have wanted in this situation.

Do you think that the judge was right to approve of Marrero's desire to increase her family, despite her lover's death?

Photo: Daily News

Mom Gets OK to Collect Dead Son's Sperm

Ice, Ice Baby: Frozen Sperm Works, 22 Years Later

Kate Tuttle — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:01:00 GMT

After all the crazy stories of fertility treatments gone mad and nutty grandparents trying to extract sperm from the dead, it's refreshing to hear about the everyday miracles advanced reproductive technology can bring to parents who yearn for a child.

Chris Biblis, now 39, was just 17 when his family and doctors encouraged him to freeze sperm for future use; he was undergoing treatement for leukemia at the time, and some of the drugs used were known to cause sterility. This was in 1987, five years before the successful injection of a sperm cell into a human egg. As anyone knows who's had "the talk" with their child, pre-teen or teenager, this subject matter can cause massive embarrassment on both sides. Thank goodness, then, that Biblis's mother was courageous and humane enough to broach the subject because last month Chris and his wife had baby Stella, born to a father now cancer-free for 20 years.

The Biblises have five frozen embryos in case they want to attempt to have more kids. But for now, I'm sure they're still amazed at how fortunate they are that science -- and Stella's grandmother -- could see into a future for that teenager fighting cancer.

More by this author:

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Mom Gets OK to Collect Dead Son's Sperm

JeanneSager — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:28:00 GMT

Somewhere in Texas a grandmother-to-be needs to get a grip.

Marissa Evans told a judge she wanted the rights to collect her dead twenty-one-year-old's sperm to make a grandchild because "I want him to live on. I want to keep a piece of him." The worst part? The judge said, yeah, OK, sounds good to me.

What is wrong with this picture? Oh boy, where do we begin? Maybe with the fact that Nikolas Evans is dead. Or with the fact that he was twenty-one when he died. Or how about the fact that this was his mother we're talking about?

Because a guy's random statements that he wanted to have children one day . . . and taking his sperm from his cold, dead body (I'm not being callous here, the judge got involved because they had to guarantee the sperm was gathered before his body cooled to less than 39.2 degree) are on opposite ends of the spectrum. Marissa Evans said her son really wanted to kids one day. He even had names picked out - Hunter, Van and Tod.

It's sad that this man did not get to live out his dreams, sadder still that a life was lost at twenty-one. But let's face it, children are not put on this earth for a parent's sake. We as parents create kids because we want to give them life, provide for them, help make them into productive members of society. It's supposed to be an unselfish act; living for someone else. Unfortunately, we all know too many parents who look to their kids to do for them instead of the other way around.

And that's just what Marissa Evans is expecting of an as-yet-unborn child. She wants them to replace her son, to give her a link to something she very sadly lost. Can you imagine the burden put on that tiny person's shoulders? An adult is pinning hopes and dreams on a child, who has no control over how similar or dissimilar they'll be to their dead parent.

She's not the first - a couple in New York just recently lost the fight to use their dead son's sperm to impregnate a surrogate, because they wanted to do the exact same thing. That fight was lost at the surrogacy stage, and hopefully this one will be too - or, better yet, when Marissa Evans moves past the denial stage of the grieving process, she'll realize she cannot bring her son back.

What do you think Babble readers? Would you be shooting lightning bolts downward if someone got hold of your sperm or eggs and wanted to make babies after your death?

Image: CyprusIVF

Exploited and Discarded? Seeking Protection for Egg Donors

Kate Tuttle — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:01:00 GMT

The new parents beam, the babies gurgle and coo, and People magazine takes a picture of yet another family made possible by egg donation (you don't think all those 45-year-old actresses are just having twins by some crazy coincidence, do you?). But what happens to the woman whose biological material helped make it all possible? Her job done, the egg donor typically recedes into the background, a check for $5,000 (or more, or less) in her hand, gone without a trace.

Now some former donors and other advocates for women's health want that to change. While the Centers for Disease Control keeps track of the number of eggs donated to women facing infertility -- it was more than 15,000 in 2006 -- the donors of those eggs, and information about their health after serving as donors, is not followed in any way. Given that egg donation involves treatment with powerful hormones, many of which carry at least some cancer risk, the lack of follow-up and systematic tracking bothers many.

"Right now egg donors are treated like vendors, not as patients. Patients need to be followed up," Jennifer Schneider told Time magazine. Schneider, a doctor, has become a critic of the way donors are treated ever since losing her own daughter, who donated three times and died of colon cancer at 31.

Even worse, many egg donors appear to lack basic information about even the short-term health risks they're taking on when they agree to donate. From the Time article:

In an article published in Fertility and Sterility in November 2008, researchers found, for example, that 34% of former egg donors didn't recall being aware at the time of donation of the risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, the most common side effect. The majority of donors experience at least the mild or moderate form of this syndrome, which involves discomfort, bloating or nausea and usually resolves itself on its own. The severe version of this syndrome is rare - only 100 to 200 for every 100,000 women - but its consequences can include kidney failure and death. And then there are other side effects, such as bleeding, infection and death, which are associated with any surgery performed under general anesthesia. But fully 20% of the 80 donors interviewed said they didn't know there were any physical risks to egg donation at all.

With a growing number of families seeking advanced reproductive technology, and an increasing number of willing donors (motivated at least in part by economic woes, some clinics are reporting a jump of over 50% in the number of prospective donors over last year's numbers), egg donation isn't going away. But it's time to stop treating it as a simple exchange of money for risk, or even money for genetic material. Donors need more information, and clinics need to not only make sure they understand the risks but provide follow-up healthcare, as well as tracking outcomes so that future medical professionals -- and donors -- can understand the actual long-term risks. Right now there are no credible studies that can assess those risks -- the most frightening aspect of which is uterine cancer -- because no registry has ever existed.

Currently the American Society for Reproductive Medicine is consulting with fertility docs on a nonprofit, voluntary registry of both egg and sperm donors, but as recent controversies have made all too clear, self-regulation isn't a strength of the fertility industry (really, of any industry). One hopes that the parents who benefit from the technology that brought them babies will also remember the generosity and courage of the women who provided their eggs and push their clinics for better care and research -- and contact their political representatives to ask for the same from our government.

More by this author:

Another Hospital Baby Mix-Up, Now With Added Racism!

Spurred to Action by Natasha Richardson Death, Parents Save Girl

Child Support Suffers in a Recession, Too

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Kids Explain How Babies Are Made

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:00:00 GMT

In this entertaining (if a bit overdone) video about the outrageous myths kids believe about the way babies come into the world, a man admits that he used to believe "pregnancy particles" were floating in the air. "I was nervous many times," he says. "I thought I might get pregnant." Another man admits that he used to think anything he put his penis in would get pregnant. After testing out this theory on a tree in his backyard, he was turned off to sex for years.

The video is worth watching to the end, for the adorable kids who explain their own—much more accurate—understanding of the miracle of life.

What baby-making myths did you believe as a child? At what age do you think kids are old enough to learn the truth about reproduction?

Photo: SodaHead

New Coke: The New Birth Control?

JeanneSager — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:51:00 GMT

High school seniors everywhere are counting on too much Mountain Dew to help them practice safe sex. Who knew they'd be better off with Diet Coke?

Turns out doin' the Dew isn't going to destroy his sperm count (you'll just have to trust me on this one . . . she's running around the living room right now). But a 23-year-old study by researchers at Boston University's School of Medicine that found Coca-Cola has the makings of a good spermicide resurfaced this week to win an Ig Nobel Award - the prize handed out by Harvard University for "research that makes people laugh and then think."

The study, published in the 1985 New England Journal of Medicine, found Diet Coke was the best beverage to pour on your lower parts to kill off little swimmers. Brings a whole new meaning to bringing a little bubbly to bed to celebrate your consumation. It also sounds messy . . . and more than a little kinky.

But before you try it, you might want to read up on the other Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize Winner this year: a group of Taiwanese scientists who found sperm retained up to 70 percent mobility despite the extra fizz in the bedroom.

Image: ABC News

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Anything to Conceive

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Cindy Chupack tried visualizing sperm with her husband’s face on them. She tried standing on her head. She tried electroacupuncture, which involved attaching spark plugs to the needles. She tried going on vacation with her husband and just enjoying sex for a while, you know, like they used to before they started racing her biological clock. She tried IVF, suppositories, hormone injections.

She tried an all-red meat diet, and then, when she read somewhere that red meat actually hinders pregnancy while she had a steak on the grill, she ate her stale gingerbread house in her frustration and hunger.

Like many women, Chupack, who recently wrote about her conception adventures for O Magazine, began the whole procreating process relatively late. It was not until she was 40 that she fell in love with the right man and had real longings for children—which was just fine by her, but not so fine by her body.

But, also like many women, Chupack will not give up trying. If you think that the gingerbread house incident put her over the edge, well, you’ve probably never tried to conceive.

Image: John Cuneo/O Magazine

Denise Richards Reality Show Canceled

Brett Singer — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:00:00 GMT

It's official – you won't have Denise Richards to kick around anymore.

The E! channel has canceled the unwatchable "It's Complicated," which followed Richards as she tried raising her kids and a lot of pets… or something like that. I watched the first episode and found it mostly dull, but also somewhat depressing, since she had her young children on camera all the freakin' time. Remember that it was her ex-husband Charlie Sheen who wanted to keep the kids off of the show, but Denise took him to court and won. It's an old joke now, but when Charlie Sheen is the good parent, something is very, very wrong.

The reason for the cancellation isn't very complicated at all: nobody was watching. Page Six quotes "a source" who said, "The numbers started out pretty good - just over 1.5 million tuned in for the premiere episode…But the audience has dropped off." In other words, people would have been interested, but she just wasn't that interesting.

It's worth remembering that Denise Richards had a career as an actress for awhile. Granted, it was largely based on her looks, but she was considered one of the hotter young starlets around (think Megan Fox). Things were already on the decline career-wise when she married Sheen, so it would be easy to say that she is a victim of Hollywood ageism. But I have a feeling that some of the behavior she displayed on her reality show – the Post cites one "her confrontation with an editor for a magazine over how she [was] portrayed in the tabloid press" as a "low-light" for the series – was also her behavior in real life. That's just a guess, of course. Oh well. At least her kids won't have their lives on display anymore. Maybe she can do "Dancing with the Stars."

Source: NYPost

Image: LATimes.com

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My Mother Was an Egg Donor

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:00:00 GMT

How would you feel if, out of the blue, you learned that those triplets you grew up playing with were technically your half-siblings?

This was the subject of a recent question posed to Slate’s Dear Prudence column. The writer, a college student, recently learned that his mother had her eggs harvested and donated to an infertile couple who are close friends of the writer’s family. This knowledge turned his world upside down. He feels hatred toward the triplets who were conceived with his mother’s egg, and is worried that his mother loves them more than she loves him. The writer seems surprised—as I was—by his intense feelings of jealousy and bitterness. He has tried to focus on his mother’s generosity, but he keeps focusing instead on the fact that he has three half-siblings he really doesn’t want.

Good ole Prudie points out that, while his mother simply donated a “microscopic bit of herself,” the mother to whom she gave her eggs carried triplets for nine months, gave birth to them, and raised them. In other words, being an egg donor is not even close to being a parent. While the writer’s mother helped these triplets come into the world, she is not their mother.

Would others feel similarly devastated if they discovered one of their parents had helped an infertile couple conceive? Would you be less likely to donate your eggs or sperm if you already had kids of your own?

Photo: worldrumour.blogspot.com

Boys Don't Swim: Fertility in Men Over 40

Rachael Brownell (Redsy) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:01:00 GMT

Every sperm may be sacred, but some just aren't as viable after a certain age. Maternal age is a proven factor in fertility issues, but the link between paternal age and miscarriage rates has not been established as strongly until now.

According to findings presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference, paternal age of 40 or greater has a great effect on miscarriage as well as pregnancy rates.

Whether this new information will stop May-Decembrists from trysting remains to be seen.

Denise Richards still trying to prove she's insane

Brett Singer — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:00:00 GMT

It's Friday the 13th, which must be why I'm drawn to stories about weird, evil people today.

Denise Richards isn't in the same league and Josef Fritzl or Charles Manson, but she does seem to be trying to prove to the world that she's out of her gourd. Showbiz Spy reports that the former Mrs. Charlie Sheen is, "pleading with the star to stop publicly bashing her now he has re-married…'He loves to trash me in the press and discredit me and has tried to sabotage my show. I hope that now that he's married, he can move forward and be civil.'"

Now, we're not excusing Charlie Sheen, who has his own issues, to put it mildly. Back in May he claimed that Denise emailed him asking for a sperm donation. Denise's reply was, shall we say, something less than "civil": "I don't want Charlie's prostitute-tranny-infested sperm." Nice.

She also accused Chuck of exploiting, "our entire situation." Um, you have a reality show on E! that features your kids. Pot? Kettle? Neither one of them is winning parent of the year, but I think when you put your toddler-age children on a reality show you kind of lose the right to accuse your former husband for "exploiting the situation".

I have a wacky, wacky idea for Denise and Charlie. Yes, you hate each other. Yes, it's an ugly divorce. But you have kids. Stop talking to the media for awhile. SHUT-UP.

image: Page Six

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It's Business Time, or All About Conception

Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:09:00 GMT

I have been really enjoying a blog who title is a complete mystery to me -- XBoxforNappyRash. But the story is a gift to the internets, as one 30-year-old man documents the long, hilarious, obscenely touching and heartfelt journey to conception.

It's been 14 cycles now and still ... only hope. I would be a complete mess but somehow, impossibly, he pulls it off, writing some of the funniest, most honest essays I have ever seen. I'm just saying, "man milk." I could never write about my own.

Just wanted to give a quick shout out, because this is a story that is not to be missed. If you're looking for a great perspective on getting knocked up, go no further. There is something for everyone here, even people who like to name their wife's eggs.

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Pregcellent: Vacant Womb For Rent

Kelly Mills — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 22:33:00 GMT

First off, I'd like to say that anyone who goes into being a surrogate strictly for the money has chosen a very challenging way to make a buck, because being pregnant is no picnic. But as this Newsweek article on the lives of surrogates points out, many women are also motivated by a desire to help others and to contribute something meaningful to the lives of couples who want kids. And the stereotype of the rich woman who wants a baby but not the stretch marks and thus hires a surrogate is strange also, since I can't imagine what would be more challenging than entrusting another person with your offspring before they are even born. So I doubt that one is founded much in reality either.

The article, which chronicles the stories of a number of women who became surrogates, touches on the controversies surrounding the practice, and there are many. There's the issue of maternal rights, and the fact that most surrogacy contracts aren't binding in many ways. There's the issues that come with one person in essence renting out their body, and the questions around what makes someone a parent, DNA or gestation or actual childrearing. Surrogacy is banned in much of Europe, and stereotypes about surrogates abound. Interestingly, many surrogates are military wives with husbands overseas. The article is worth checking out, if only because it makes you think hard about what it means to be a mother.

Cocktails Messing Up Male Junk

Madeline Holler — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:35:00 GMT

A dangerous cocktail is killing off sperm and causing malformed penises and it's not the kind of cocktail you stir and sip. It's also not the kind of cocktail you can avoid.

Researchers, who wanted to understand the rise in low sperm count and malformed male sex organs, are finding that endocrine-disrupting chemicals, which are harmless alone and in small doses, are killing off sperm and messing with development when mixed (in great quantities) in a developing fetus's environment.

The study, conducted on rats in Denmark, tested three chemicals already shown to be harmless individually: the drug flutamide and the pesticides vinclozolin and procymidone.

What they found was that prenatal exposure to a mix of the three chemicals significantly increased the number of baby rats born with malformed external sex organs and also developed some female characteristics.

The researchers say this cocktail effect should be taken into account before declaring individual chemicals as harmless.

Does A Cell Phone Zap Sperm?

Adrienne Martini — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Well's Tara Parker-Pope tackles a question that I hadn't even thought to ask: will carrying a cell phone in a pants' pocket have a negative impact on a man's fertility.

The answer is less than satisfying (in short: maybe) but the question raises even more questions. Could carrying your Blackberry near your twig-and-berries be an effective form of birth control? Does the size of a man's Nokia correlate with his potency? If he has a Razr, is he straight and true?

These are the questions that I want answers to, Ms Parker-Pope. The gauntlet has been tossed.

Image credit: mac.com

Fresh-Squeezed, Frozen, or Freeze-Dried Sperm?

Amy Kuras — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 22:23:00 GMT

Apparently, it's Sperm Week here on Strollerderby.

Along with bone marrow as building material, we're now getting close to instant, just add water, sperm-in-a-jar. Mmmmm, freeze-dried sperm. Think of it — you want a baby, you just pull that jar of dessicated spunk off the shelf and away you go to the clinic. It lasts forever, doesn’t need special storage and apparently works just as well as frozen or fresh-squeezed.

Ryuzo Yanagimachi, a scientist at the University of Hawaii, first freeze dried mouse sperm in his lab, creating a powder that could be reconstituted with water. The rehydrated sperm didn't swim, but could be injected into an egg and worked fine. Several mouse babies have been born this way, and scientists have also made baby bunnies and monkey embryos, although no monkeys have been knocked up a result. And now, Yanagimachi and two colleagues have successfully freeze dried real human Man Seed, although they haven’t tried to fertilize a human egg with it yet.

The idea is to provide an easier-to-store alternative to frozen sperm, which has to be kept at extra low temperatures with liquid nitrogen. Nitrogen is expensive and has to be replaced as it evaporates over time, and a disaster like Hurricane Katrina could wipe out a entire bank's worth in no time.

I'm torn between trying to come up with a Taster's Choice joke and thinking this is actually a fabulous idea, when 50 percent of all infertility cases have a male factor, not to mention making donor sperm more easily available to lesbian couples.

Just don't mix up the jars.

No Baby Daddy Needed

Adrienne Martini — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Quick, ladies! While the men are distracted by the big game, take a gander at this breakthough in reproductive technology. If science has its way, pretty soon, men won't be needed to make babies.

Turns out, it is completely conceivable that sperm cells could be made out of a woman's bone marrow. This discovery may pave the way for lesbians who want to have biological offspring without adopting or tracking down a donor. Gay men should be able to get in on the marrow action as well. Plus, this could lead to a breakthough in infertility research.

It's still too early to chuck out the penis with the bathwater. Our science fiction future -- the one where women keep men as pets -- isn't here yet. But it is something to keep in mind, just in case.

Image credit: www.blogs.timeunion.com

Man Gets Vasectomy, Tells Us About It

Kelly Mills — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 18:37:00 GMT

In Slate there was an essay on one guy's vasectomy. I could probably summarize it with, "Having a vasectomy is an awkward and scary experience." I get that. I mean, who wants one of their most beloved parts operated on? And the essayist, Michael Lewis, states he had the snip snip for his wife, who had already dealt with three pregnancies, labors, and deliveries, plus "changed most of the diapers, gotten up most of the mornings, and, on top of it all, given me the leisure to write many articles complaining about the inconveniences of fatherhood." Nice lady.

So dude, I want you to know that I totally sympathize with your discomfort at having your balls shaved by a nurse and your squeamishness over the cutting of the man-parts. But there is this tiny little voice in my head saying, "Uh, at least it wasn't childbirth." I don't want to get into some one-upping thing, but dealing with nine months of discomfort culminating in an event that often involves serious pain, some lasting body trauma, and involuntarily crapping in front of your doctor is no picnic. And I missed why the author thinks he's a "traitor to his sex." Huh? Shooting blanks doesn't translate to letting the boys down, any more than giving birth makes us ladies true women. But whatever, just be grateful you didn't have someone telling you just to breathe and try not to push yet.

Woman Steals Money From Hopeful Parents By Pretending To Be Surrogate

Kelly Mills — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:31:00 GMT

A South Carolina woman was arrested for scamming folks out of money and sperm. Jessica O'Donnell told prospective parents that her husband was killed in Iraq, and that she wanted to help people by being a surrogate mother. Couples all over the country sent her thousands of dollars. She even had people send sperm packed in coolers along with the money, we assume to make the whole thing more convincing. The authorities found fake I.D.s and computers and coolers in O'Donnell's home. Of course O'Donnell carried a baby for no one.

So where was her dead soldier husband? Actually alive and well and completely in on the scam. He's been arrested and charged too. This kind of scheme is extra evil because it preys on really hopeful and anxious folks, many of whom want a baby very desperately and have been trying for years to have one. It's hard enough to get to the place where you realize you will need a surrogate, and to place your trust someone and have them turn out to be a crook...Bleaugh. Evil evil evil.

Laydees Rule Reproduction

Kelly Mills — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:01:00 GMT

You know how there's those horrible t-shirts for expectant dads expressing pride in having fast sperm and so on? It turns out that women's plumbing might actually make the final call in the mating game. Researchers are looking at female reproductive systems, and finding some things that they say explain female promiscuity in some species. The findings could also have implications in IVF and cloning and so on. They looked at the oviducts of pigs (we are kinda like pigs) and found that a series of changes occur when the presence of sperm is detected. Basically the oviductal environment changes to store sperm and get it to the egg safely. That's right: Females call the shots. Mmm hmm.

And how does this apply to tramping around? Well, there may be some selection of optimal sperm that goes on as well. If the presence of different sperm is detected, the top quality stuff might be chosen over the lower grade versions. Bottom line is that the female reproductive system has been relatively ignored in the competition side of procreation, and of course it probably plays a bigger role than was suspected before.

Oh, and IVF? Check this from the lead author: "The female reproductive tract is a very highly organized and regulated system," Fazeli explained. "With IVF, the embryo can develop into an adult, but the question remains: 'Are we doing the fine-tuning right'? We are not sure if what we are doing, based on differences between in-vitro and in-vivo fertilization, is creating health problems for these babies." I think the lesson is clear. It never pays to ignore the lady parts. Ever.

Droolicious: Shut Up about Your Sperm Already

Rachael Brownell (Redsy) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:02:00 GMT

Posted by Kelly Mills

When I posted about a bad t-shirt for expectant fathers, I really had no idea it could have been so much worse. This one, for example, is idiotic to the power of stupid. I'm sorry, but bragging about your swimmers, even as a joke, is just lame. Nobody wants to think about your sperm. I don't even want to think about Johnny Depp's sperm. And far be it for me to become the sensitivity police, but it's even a little rude to the infertile guys. This shirt is 30 seconds away from being worn ironically by a hipster kid. Hey, it's $20.99 in the organic cotton version. Whoop dee barfy doo.

For drooliciousness that won't make you want to spit up, check out:

Beautiful organic baby clothes
Comfy pillow that will make you want to breastfeed until they're 10

Home Sperm Analysis Kit Bad News?

Kelly Mills — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 18:33:00 GMT

Web MD lays down the cons of home sperm analysis kits. The kits measure sperm motility in the privacy of your own home, so couples can presumably get more information on fertility status. But as the good doctor blogger points out, motility is only one measure of fertility, and new studies in animals indicate it may not even be a very accurate measure. Sperm count and semen volume are important too, and you really need a few, well-spaced tests to get an accurate read (and make sure an evening in the hot tub isn't wrecking the results.) Finally, some men get diagnosed with testicular cancer by doing the semen analysis, and the home kits aren't going to help with that.

As someone who had to stick a little plastic jar of swimmers in her shirt and race to the laboratory on more than one occasion (one time I showed up and got a funny look from the technician, looked down, and realized I had carpet fuzz on the knees of my pants) I completely get the appeal of testing this stuff at home. But I can see the point of going to the specialist in this instance, and just dealing with the inconvenience. It sounds like these kits are about as wise as home perm kits. You know, you think you are saving yourself time and money, but next thing you know you've done a bad, bad thing and you have to go pro in the end anyway.

Dead Israeli Soldier Lives On Through Sperm

Karen Murphy — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 16:09:00 GMT

I remember a long-ago and very moving episode of a popular hospital TV show (ER? Chicago Hope? St. Elsewhere even?) where the husband was dying and on life-support, and the caring and thoughtful hospital staff looked the other way while the grieving but very much childless widow-to-be, uh, inseminated herself via her husband before they pulled the plug on his respirator. I know, I know, it sounds like a smarmy Jay Leno joke, but it was actually very touching, thinking that this was the only way that the wife could have a living piece of her beloved husband, a part of him that would live on in his stead. C'mon, don't you want to tear up here, just a little? This is, like, life!

Which is why I am completely in favor of a precedent-setting recent ruling in an Israeli court that allows the family of a dead unmarried soldier to use his sperm (extracted only hours after his death) to inseminate a woman of their choosing in order to continue the family's bloodline, granting the soldier a child he'll never know. Okay, maybe it's just a little creepy. But still! Think of the possibilities! (and who pays child support?) By the way? A CNN poll says a big fat NO to potential grandparents using their child's sperm to create a grandchild.

What do you think? Does this cross a line? Or is it a moving and beautiful new expression of the incredible urge we have a humans to continue as a species?