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| Europe |
| Danish sperm a fertile export |
| 2004-11-28 |
| TWELVE hundred years ago, the Danes spread their genes in Britain by rape and occupation. Now they are taking a less confrontational approach: a Danish sperm bank is stocking up on large amounts of semen ready to flood the British market when sperm donation rules are changed next year. Cryos International, the world's largest sperm bank, based in the university town of Aarhus, has recruited 40 donors - mostly blond, blue-eyed students over 182cm tall - who meet British regulatory requirements. Cryos, whose motto is "We keep the stork busy", hopes to take advantage of a likely sperm shortage from next April, when sperm donors in Britain lose their anonymity, meaning any children they beget will be able to trace them. Experience in other countries has shown that letting children trace their biological fathers cuts sperm donation by more than 85 per cent. Ole Schou, managing director and founder of Cryos, said: "The system in the United Kingdom will collapse. We expect in the near future sales to the UK will increase dramatically. We will be very busy. We have 40 donors prepared for that, and we are trying to find more." The company has 250 specially screened Danish donors on its books, and pays them £25 ($60) for each sample. The sperm is deep frozen and exported to 40 countries, including Britain, Kenya and China. Since being set up in 1987, Cryos has been responsible for almost 10,000 births, with such big demand in the US for Scandinavian looks that the company has opened an office in New York. Cryos sperm is popular because, as well as being plentiful, it is filtered to a higher quality, leading to a higher-than-average success rate for conception. In Britain, couples have the donor chosen for them by the clinic they are using, but in the US parents can choose the donor and are given full information about him. Cryos's US website outlines the physical and medical characteristics of some of its donors, such as Ante, the 195cm, blond, blue-eyed medical student, or Borg the 192cm blond, green-eyed MA student. Potential clients find out full details of donors, such as Jens, who is blond, blue-eyed, enjoys soccer, skiing, salsa and badminton, plays the piano, speaks English and German, and is earning his masters degree in physical chemistry. To prevent accidental incest, there are limits to how many babies can be sired by one donor - it is 10 in Britain, but 25 in Denmark. One Cryos donor has sired 101 children, unbeknown to himself, because his sperm has been sent to many different countries. The Department of Health is responding to the looming British sperm shortage by planning a recruitment drive for donors, and is considering increasing the current maximum pound stg. 15 fee. "It's really odd that to overcome a shortage, we have to import from overseas, and that we can't sort it out in-house to serve the country's needs," said Allan Pacey, head of andrology at Sheffield Teaching Hospital. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #3 TWELVE hundred years ago, the Danes spread their genes in Britain by rape and occupation geez - sounds like 21st century Islam |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-11-28 9:53:38 PM |
| #2 Darn! Why I haven't heard of this when I was 20, I could wank for 60 bucks 5 times a day and become rich! |
| Posted by: Monk 2004-11-28 9:46:45 PM |
| #1 Lawyers, laws, and unintended consequences. |
| Posted by: RWV 2004-11-28 9:38:10 PM |