Strollerderby : sperm donation

NYT Asks: Are There Too Many Ways to Conceive?

Jen Chaney — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:29:00 GMT

Lisa Belkin over at the NYT's Motherlode blog wonders if the pursuit-of-parenthood market may be oversaturated.

Citing the recent examples of the Sarah Jessica Parker/Matthew Broderick surrogate twins and the woman attempting to become a surrogate grandmother by using her dead son's sperm, Belkin asks if science -- with its IVF, egg donations, fertility drugs and other advances -- has perhaps given us too many options. She quotes The Washington Post's Liza Mundy, who recently wrote a book about assisted reproduction: "When there is always something else to try ... there is no permission to stop. That’s the hardest part of the process for couples. For most of them, the ‘permission’ to stop comes when they run out of money."

Mundy mentions a key word there: money. I suspect that the only people who may feel overwhelmed by the vast conception options out there are people with either a. unbelievably awesome health insurance, or b. sizeable amounts of wealth.

For the average, fertility-challenged couple, it's more like: try the old-fashioned way, maybe pursue fertility drugs or IVF for a short period of time, then start looking into adoption. (Which, for the record, ain't cheap either.) As Mundy rightly points out, people usually exhaust their options when the funding runs out, and that can make them feel guilty. But I think most parental hopefuls realize their resources are limited. It's a terrible feeling to spend all that time, energy and cash on one conception option or another and still not have a child as a result. I guess I'm not just sure how many people cope with that feeling by, say, turning from in vitro fertilization to intracytoplasmic sperm injection.

I think it's valid to raise the questions Belkin mentions, for sure. I just think most Americans won't ever have to answer them because practical, economic factors will steer their decisions more than any excess of scientific options ever will. As a commenter on Belkin's blog post put it: "I agree that the possibilities can be wonderful for people who very much want to become parents, but those possibilities right now are only available to those with deep pockets. Insurance does not cover most infertility treatments."

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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.

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Sperm Donor's Teen Daughter Finds Him on Myspace

JeanneSager — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:31:00 GMT

Something tells me the creators of Myspace didn't have this kind of social networking in mind when they set up the site. A California teenager plugged in all the information she had about the man whose sperm her mom used to conceive.

The computer spit back seven possibles - including one photo that looked an awful like her. So Virginia gave Dr. Todd Whitehurst a call.

"I just want to know basic information that most people have access too," the girl said. As a physician, her "dad" could appreciate the importance of a medical history. He was even open to meeting her . . . and eventually nine other children born using his sperm banked at the San Francisco Bay area clinic.

Virginia found her nine half-siblings on the Donor Sperm Registry Website, which she shared with Whitehurst. He then went on and posted information about the two kids he has from more traditional methods. He's since met several of his "kids," including a Gavin from Pennsylvania and Tyler from New York. Like Virginia's mom, the boy's mothers were involved in the process - they were there when their kids met Whitehurst.

It's nice to see a sperm donor who cares about the kids. I've often wondered if the ease of "donation" makes it easier for men to forget about what can come out of the process. Egg donation is much more rare - and a more arduous process - but I can't honestly say that women care more for their progeny than men. We treat them differently, definitely, but I wouldn't say we "love them more."

So why aren't there more donors like Whitehurst out there?

Image: KSV

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Morning News: Bush Acknowledges Crappy Presidency ... Yet Leaving With Head Held High

Madeline Holler — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Last night in an interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson, the man who is barely still president (big sigh of relief) owned up to a few of his failures as president. He said the Iraq war exceeded his expectations (and not in a good way) and that he was unprepared for war. He also took a bit of the blame for John McCain's election loss. The biggest regret of his presidency?

Intelligence failure in Iraq, he said. He wishes the intelligence "had been different." It was, Bush, it was! Also, no mention of regrets RE: Katrina or Dick Cheney.

Hey, drop the confetti! The U.S. has officially been declared in recession! In fact, the U.S. economy has been secretly in recession for an entire year! What sneaky, debt-ridden, lay-offing, over-extended little devils Americans are. On mention of this stealth-now-real recession, the Dow plunged nearly 700 points. In case you're wondering, President Bush is sorry about the economy too.

Is it shame? Economic realities? Good ol' Alaskan consignment store shopping attitude? Sarah Palin is rewearing clothes from the campaign (and not even the cutest stuff, which, we're left to believe she did, indeed, give back)!

The Obamas are headed to Hawaii this Christmas! It's actually not news, since they spend every Christmas there, but back in August, when he took a week off in Hawaii before the convention, there were calls for him to go somewhere "normal," like Pebble Beach, S.C. Nevermind that when you grow up in Hawaii and your only living relatives live in Hawaii, going to Hawaii for Christmas is normal. (And nevermind when you grow up anywhere west of the Mississippi -- or is it west of I-95? -- going to Pebble Beach is not normal.

Some doctors don't want to scale back on vacations, so they're dropping -- yes, DROPPING! -- vaccines from their caregiving offerings to families with kids. Apparently, private insurers don't reimburse enough to make it worth it for the doctor. Plus, there's gotta be a whole lot of profit in caring for kids with measles, ear infections and meningitis! We'll file this one under "Pros" in the Universal Healthcare: Should We/Shouldn't We debate.

MSNBC has a list of the 20 Top Medical Breakthroughs for Women. So you think it's going to be about detecting heart disease early or studies determining correct dosages of common drugs. Nah. It's stuff like "liposuction is great because there are stem cells in belly fat." And also, "anti-aging products really work!"

Somebody, cut this guy off! No, not literally. But this Dutch man has fathered 46 kids through sperm donation and he's nowhere near ready to stop. He sounds altruistic (even hosting a party recently for all his children), but should his genes really be so over-represented in the population?

Photo: ABCNews.com

Is Banked Sperm Really the Same as Hair and Toenail Clippings?

JeanneSager — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:31:00 GMT

The contents of a freezer that broke down at a Britain hospital in 2003 wasn't just holding yesterday's lunch. It was keeping on ice the only hope six men would ever have of one day fathering children. Now five of the cancer patients (one has since died) are locked in a battle for damages that's now in front of the country's highest court.

The men were each told that treatment for their condition may result in the loss of their fertility - sending them scurrying to the hospital to have samples of their sperm frozen to preserve their chances of becoming a dad. In June 2003, the longterm storage unit at the Southmead Hospital failed, and the thawed sperm had to be thrown away. The North Bristol National Health System Trust, which manages the hospital, admitted it was at fault, but the men have so far been told that they are not eligible for any damages.

A county court judge earlier this year compared the sperm samples to hair and toenail clippings, stating the men had no right to claim personal injury once the sperm was removed from their body. Their lawyers are now fighting to have that overturned in front of the country's two seniormost judges.

Can anyone really compare sperm saved in a medical institution to toenails clipped over a garbage can? There's no guarantee that the sperm could successfully be used to create a viable embryo, but these men put specifically entrusted their sperm to a hospital to keep it for safekeeping. They did so with the specific intention of protecting their chances of one day becoming a father, something these men may never know (at least not in the biological sense).

People who dream of one day having children, only to learn infertility problems stand in the way, often mourn as though they've felt a physical loss. To tell them that they should look at their struggles as nothing more than losing one's hair would be both cruel and condescending. Can't the same be said for these men?

Image: eHow

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Journalist Suing for Sperm-Donor Dad's Identity

JeanneSager — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:51:00 GMT

Oliva Pratten knows her dad was stocky. He had brown hair like her and blue eyes. She even knows his blood type. What she doesn't know is who his or how he came to deposit a cup of sperm at a bank in her native Canada. Now she's suing to find out.

Pratten, a twenty-six-year-old journalist who now lives and works in New York, is suing on behalf of the spawn of all sperm donors in British Columbia, hoping to protect sperm bank records from a shredding of Arthur Anderson proportions. The goal, she says, is to end the practice of destroying medical records after six years practiced by many fertility doctors. The suit has already ensured a temporary injunction against destroying the paperwork in British Columbia, laid down by chief justice of the BC Supreme Court.

Currently adoption records in a number of Canadian provinces, including British Columbia, are protected. Pratten says that protection should apply to the children conceived by gamete donation because they too have a biological parent mystery to be solved. The fertility doctor who helped her mom get pregnant respectfully disagrees. He says he'd be violating the man's confidentiality, and without a signed release he'll give her no more than the basic medical facts.

I'm a big proponent of open adoptions, and I'd say that would extend to gamete donations. Kids should get the full story if everyone agrees to share it. But that's a very personal if. If a guy walks into a medical office today with the full knowledge he might have a kid knocking on his door in 18 years, that's one thing. It's why I think all donors today should be subject to having their identity shared with their "kids" down the road. For the kids' sake.

But for the medical student who yanked off into a cup to help pay his tuition twenty-six years ago, thinking he was doing so under a shroud of anonymity? Is anything more than disseminating medical information to the products of his donation a violation of his privacy? Or should a guy going through med school have been capable of seeing this coming?

Image: Vancouver Sun

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Bad Economy Means More Eager Egg Donors

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:45:00 GMT

One commodity in these trying economic times that is still in high demand is fertility. And more women than ever before are hoping to cash in on their eggs, with Good Morning America reporting a 30 to 40 percent increase in egg donor applicants.

Experts warn that infertile couples should be particularly careful in choosing an egg donor agency, since such a huge increase in women looking to donate means a higher risk of lower donor standards. To women in hard economic times, $5,000 may sound so tempting that it's easy to forget that egg donation comes with a heavy psychological and moral responsibility.

Image: angelico.usc.edu