Wednesday, August 28, 2019

"Dwindling stocks of Australian sperm have fertility clinics looking overseas and couples looking online"

The Monthly:
Australia requires more from its donors than other countries: before his proverbial 15 minutes in a back room with a Styrofoam cup, a donor has to agree that offspring produced from his bequest are able to identify him once they reach adulthood. He has to perform the labour for free, although he will be reimbursed for “reasonable expenses”. He also has to sit through a counselling session to ensure that he understands the repercussions of his deposits: the email, door knock or phone call that could come in future. Once a donor is recruited, his sperm is only allowed to produce children in a maximum of 10 families

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another factor that may be contributing to the shortage of sperm donors. She believes that rather than being the result of Australian men becoming opposed to donating, it’s that clinics are choosing to import sperm instead.

“When you talk to some clinic staff who have gone down the importation route you can see it becomes very easy for them to just import,” she says.

Most of the international sperm entering Australia is from the US and Denmark.

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Vox recently ran an account of Californian man . . . who signed a 12-month contract with a clinic and made US$12,000 from his bi-weekly deposits.

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The registry also reveals how apathetic American sperm banks are in regulating family limits – the number of related offspring permissible. Kramer identified a donor with more than 200 offspring, and is aware of a dozen donors with more than 100 children (some of whom were conceived in Australian clinics). There is evidence of sperm from the US being shipped to two clinics in Queensland and NSW that both believed they had sole access to the donor’s gametes.

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crossing paths with someone who shares half of your DNA is not as far-fetched when considering the possibility of communities with potentially high rates of reproductive assistance. There are, for example, clusters of “rainbow suburbs” with sizeable LGBTI populations. “They all send their children to the same schools – often intentionally,”

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Sperm Donation Australia is a Facebook group . . . . Its banner is an illustration of sperm encroaching towards a map of Australia, a graphic resembling a campaign against immigration – not that it’s repelled any of the group’s 5000 plus members.
Meanwhile:
South Korea’s fertility rate -- the number of expected babies per woman -- fell to 0.98 in 2018, according to data released by the statistics office Wednesday. At 1.05 in 2017, it was already the lowest among members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, far below Japan’s 1.43
*Previously: Running shoes designed for menstruating women