Frozen Assets

Some bank. The bankbook is called The Semen Depositor's Handbook. Along with it comes a brown glass bottle, for deposits. "No appointment is necessary," says the handbook, adding, in capital letters, that "IT IS IMPORTANT THAT THE EJACULATE SHOULD NOT BE OVER TWO HOURS OLD." Home collection, the booklet notes, is preferred, but the bank also maintains its own ejaculatorium in Manhattan (with, as Executive Vice President Dr. Jerome A. Silbert notes, "various levels of erotica to assist"). What do the bankers do with the deposits? They freeze them. Frozen assets, as it were.

Frozen sperm have been used on a limited scale for 18 years; during that period they have been responsible for more than 400 babies. But only recently have sperm banks been available to the general public. One of the first was Genetic Laboratories Inc. in Minneapolis, with a branch office in Manhattan. The newest and most modern facility is Idant, also in Manhattan, which began collections this month. So far there have been more than 1,000 deposits in the new commercial vaults, and only a few withdrawals.

Stored Family. Why sperm banks?

The majority of depositors are fathers who are about to have vasectomies because at present they want no more children. Should they change their minds, their frozen sperm will be available. Other customers are men concerned about involuntary sterilization such as surgical patients and men who must work near radiation-producing equipment.

There are still other categories: anonymous donors whose sperm will be used for artificially inseminating women who cannot otherwise become pregnant, and would-be fathers whose semen will be consolidated in an attempt to raise their sperm count to a level high enough to cause pregnancy. And there are also a few simple eccentrics--like the Midwestern grandfather who has stored his seed against the possibility that his only son might prove infertile and thus not carry on the family line.

At Idant each deposit is carefully analyzed and a sampling of the sperm counted in an electronic device to establish the semen's degree of fertility. The semen is then stored in thin plastic "straws," labeled, placed within a cigar-shaped aluminum container and chilled to -321DEG F. in liquid nitrogen. Sperm banks are inordinately careful to guard against unauthorized use of their resources. Donors are blood-typed, for instance, because certain substances are common to both individual sperm and blood and thus serve to identify "ownership" of the substance.

There are also other precautions.

There is a 45-day waiting period, for example, before sperm can be withdrawn from the bank--long enough to prevent an already pregnant woman from using artificial insemination as a cover-up for an illegitimate baby. That waiting period does not apply, however, to a man who wishes his sperm destroyed: that can be done immediately, the Depositor's Handbook guarantees. The same swift fate awaits the ejaculate of a man who fails to keep up his support payments; in Manhattan those payments amount to $18 a year, after the initial deposit fee of $80.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.