Mo Rocca 180: Whose Your Sperm Donor Daddy?

Comedian Mo Rocca posted the below text and video on his site:

There's a sperm bank-ruptcy crisis in America right now. The AP reports: "A ban on sperm from all European countries with exposure to mad cow disease means U.S. sperm banks are running low." The ban includes sperm from 30 countries.

So American women are facing narrower choices. As The New York Post put it:

"Couples who once hoped to purchase samples from square-jawed, strapping Norsemen living in Lillehammer will have to settle for locksmiths, bartenders and struggling writers from less exotic locales, such as Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Rego Park, Queens, and Hackensack, N.J."

Given the increasingly limited options, how would you answer the questions we posed to New York's women...

NY Times Op Ed re Genetic Engineering Through Donor Conception

no. 389

David Brooks in an Op Ed column titled "The National Pastime" published by the NY Times today, June 15th, quotes a Harris Poll that " 40 percent of Americans would use genetic engineering to upgrade their children mentally and physically". His opening paragraph states:

"At this very moment thousands of people are surfing the Web looking for genetic material so their children will be nothing like me. They are looking through files at sperm bank sites with Jetson-like names such as Xytex, which have become the new eBays for offspring."

The column continues to state that at the current rate "normal" non perfect specimen humans do not stand a chance and that to keep up all of us must follow suit or our children will be left behind.

I submitted a reply that individuals like me did not go the donor route to simply improve our gene pool or our children's chances of attending Dalton here in Manhattan. If anything the normal couple choosing donor conception, at least here in the US where such choices of donor are possible, made such choices as to match our infertile selves as best as possible. If anything I stated that our donor's medical history is a tad worse than my own. [Do my children have a lawsuit against for me for such a decision? Lord I hope not but I digress.]

I am posting the full text of the column on this blog's Annex as it is only available on-line if you subscribe to Times Select. It always seems like articles like this pop up around Mother's Day or Father's Day or is it just me noticing them more around this time of year.