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Sperm banks run short on Nordic deposits
Life in a multicultural country...
Perhaps this can become a new revenue stream for the EU?
Quote:
When Julie Peterson decided to have a baby on her own two years ago, she picked a tall, blond, blue-eyed Danish engineer as a sperm donor...
By Rob Stein
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — When Julie Peterson decided to have a baby on her own two years ago, she picked a tall, blond, blue-eyed Danish engineer as a sperm donor to match her own Scandinavian heritage. But when she went back to the sperm bank to use the same donor to have another child, she was stunned to discover the federal government had made it impossible.
"I just cried," said Peterson, 43, who lives in North Carolina. "I was in complete shock."
The sperm bank had run out of vials from Peterson's donor and could not get more, because of restrictions health officials have instituted to protect Americans against the human form of mad-cow disease. Since May 2005, the United States has effectively barred sperm banks from importing from Europe for fear it might spread the brain-ravaging pathogen that causes the affliction.
As the remaining vials of Nordic semen frozen in U.S. sperm banks are running out, a small number of would-be parents are frantic. Peterson has flown repeatedly to Denmark, and is going again this week, to try to get pregnant with sperm from the same donor. Others are going to Canada or Mexico, or haggling with other U.S. women with leftover vials.
"I think it's outrageous," said Laura, a Los Angeles lawyer who asked that her last name be withheld. She decided against paying a New York woman more than $2,000 for a few vials from a donor she nicknamed "Sven," whom she used a few years ago to conceive a son. A vial usually costs less than $500. "I'd love to give him a full sibling. But I just couldn't do it. It's so unfortunate."
The restrictions on sperm from Europe were among the steps the U.S. government took after the mad-cow outbreak in Europe in the late 1990s. In rare cases, people who eat meat from infected animals develop the fatal, untreatable human version of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The ailment is caused by an infectious mutant protein that slowly eats away brain tissue. Some people have been infected through contaminated surgical equipment and transplanted tissue, such as corneas, but there are no known cases of infection from sperm.
Before the restrictions went into effect, two sperm banks — California Cryobank in Los Angeles and Cryos International in New York — imported sperm from Denmark. The Nordic donors were popular because of their blue eyes and blond hair, and their tendency to be tall and have advanced degrees.
"The demand was huge," said Peter Bower of Nordic Cryobank of Copenhagen, which supplied California Cryobank. "In addition to being tall and well-educated, their motivations for donation are quite sincere; they want to help childless couples. They tended to sell out very fast."
With California Cryobank's and Cryos' supplies virtually depleted, Nordic Cryobank filed a petition in June asking the Food and Drug Administration to lift the restrictions.
"The risk is insignificant," Bower said.
He cited one study that concluded that getting mad-cow disease from sperm is far less likely than being killed by lightning.
Because of the pending petition, the FDA refused to discuss the restrictions, which bar importing sperm from any donor who has lived in the United Kingdom or France for more than three months, or elsewhere in Europe for more than five years, since 1980.
Some experts defended the guidelines, saying that while the risk is probably small, women have other options.
"I don't see it as a big negative," said Jacob Mayer, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk. Mayer said that if transmission occurred, it could affect the mother and the child.
"You have to worry about the next generation," he said.
Other experts said that spreading the disease by sperm has never been documented, even among regular sexual partners of people with the illness.
David Ball, laboratory director at Seattle Reproductive Medicine, said, "You can never say never, but it seems like a very remote possibility."
Ball, who helps set standards for fertility clinics for the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, added, "There are a lot of people in the field who would question the utility of the regulation as it now stands."
Because there is no shortage of sperm from U.S. donors, the biggest outcry has come from women seeking more exotic donors or those with a clear genetic lineage, and from women, such as Peterson, who want to have another child using the same donor as before.
"I'm Swedish-Norwegian and really wanted to have a gene pool that was similar to my own," Peterson said.
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