Students, wank banks, and human identity: debating Oxford’s sperm
As well as a serious water shortage it appears that we also need to start worrying about a significant drought building up in the United Kingdom in another essential life force domain - human sperm. According to local press the scarcity of human sperm in Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire has reached catastrophic levels and only one sperm donor has survived to service the whole area. And this at a time when male infertility is affecting more and more would-be fathers.
When you have all stopped giggling about the Herculean task the lone sperm donor has ahead of him, let me tell you that I am absolutely delighted to hear that the student source is at last drying up. Juxtaposing water shortage with sperm scarcity is not a casual gesture.
For the most part these issues are presented in similar market language, as if the male gametes which are essential for the creation of new human life are no more special than any other commodity which happens to be in short supply, water, oil, or whatever. Oxford doctor Tim Childs has highlighted the extent of the national crisis, and confesses that the situation is now so desperate that we have had to resort to importing sperm from other countries.
The same doctor laments the scarcity of student donors and attributes the declining numbers to new legislation which prohibits serious payment for ‘donations’, and no longer permits the donors to remain anonymous. Perhaps it is the fee level which is not sufficiently enticing to bring out the student donors in large numbers, and perhaps too the embarrassing worry that one day offspring might actually turn up at the door.
But I would like to give students the benefit of some higher principles as well. Maybe they have simply come to their senses and now realize that there have to be better ways of making money than selling their genetic future to somebody else. Even the most lackadaisical student has probably at last realized that if your sperm is added to somebody else’s egg, no matter how, then the resulting child will be forever a genetic relation.
But just in case any of you are still feeling inclined to respond to Dr Childs’s recruitment efforts, I would like to share with you the perspective of some of these resulting children, and how they feel about the process of donor conception. I have notes from one young man I interviewed, a student aged 22, who found out how he had been conceived when his parents divorced. ‘I’ve seen ads for sperm donors at university,’ said James. ‘£17.50 a go. I felt absolute fury.
That’s me I think when I read those ads. Is my dad just any old Tom, Dick or Harry?’ Joanna Rose, who went to the High Court to establish the rights of donor children to know their genetic parents, is one of three contributors to booklet ‘ Who am I? Experiences of donor conception’ to be published this year. It is an uncomfortable read.
Joanna’s research into her origins uncovered how a handful of students cornered the market in three Harley Street Clinics, or ‘wank banks’ as they liked to call them. Between them they fathered one to three hundred children each, one of whom is possibly Joanna. She has not been successful in her search for her donor-father, but thanks to the legal case, anonymity has now been withdrawn and by law sperm donors are only allowed to father ten offspring.
No matter how many restrictions are in place, I still feel immensely uncomfortable about this method of achieving fatherhood. The kind of proposals I would like to hear are not about the quickfix targeting of Oxford students for their sperm. I would like to see far more serious investigation into the causes of low sperm counts (a prevalent problem in Europe) as well as research into genuine cures for infertile patients.
It is my belief that most couples would prefer to be successfully doing what comes naturally and not relying on the services of a sperm bank.
25th May 2006