The New Eugenics: the California Cryobank

The California Cryobank is an institution in the new eugenics, the propagation of the baby trade, very similar in fact to the slave trade of old. Get the baby you desire, with the characteristics you desire. The first to be auctioned off are the men who donate the sperm to make the baby. Not just every man will do.

Today, buyers don't have to stand on the dock and examine their muscles and teeth of the various people offered for sale. Instead, they can examine all of these people on their computers from the privacy of their own homes. In fact, the Cryobank does the first round for them:

Today the California Cryobank—probably the world's premier sperm bank—tests for a dozen genetic disorders and for almost as many infectious diseases. Donors must complete a 38-page, three-generation medical history, and submit to months of blood testing. The cryobank accepts only college graduates or students enrolled in a four-year program. (The cryobank's offices are in Westwood, Palo Alto, and Cambridge, Mass., meaning that most of its donors hail from USC, UCLA, Stanford, Harvard, and MIT.) And donors must stand at least 5 feet 9 inches tall. By the time it weeds out the sickly, the short, and the dim, the California Cryobank accepts only 3 percent to 5 percent of applicants.

The cryobank barrages customers with choices. A recent catalog listed more than 170 men of every race, national origin, and appearance. A client can buy the entire long medical history (written in the donor's own hand, so the client can judge handwriting). Some donors make audiotapes that clients listen to.

...The California Cryobank supplies tall collegians because that is what women want. (The ideal donor, he says: 6 feet tall, college degree, brown eyes, blond hair, and dimples.)

And who is out there seeking to buy the genes of these wonderful men?

Rothman estimates that 40 percent of his clients are single women or lesbians.

YES They KNOW Even If You Don't Tell Them

A common experience among the children of sperm donors is that they somehow KNOW it even if you don't tell them. Which just shows that they are NOT growing up in an absolutely normal conditions, despite their exterior happiness and adjustedness. They have always felt something was off, and from everything I've read, they are usually not surprised to find out the truth. Here is Plotz reaveling what he found in his own research into what happened once parents told their children the truth:

Their kids were generally not surprised, they report: Some kids told their moms that they always felt something was off.

And:

Gage says he wasn't very surprised when his mom broke the news: "I have always noticed differences between my dad and me. … His personality is nothing like mine." Many mothers said their kids felt "relief" when they learned dad was not dad. As Jacob's mom put it, "He always knew but he didn't know."

Oonce they are told, the children tend to feel the following:

They find themselves with children who no longer know exactly who they are and no longer have a complete family. The mothers don't have much to tell them.

So now, these mothers are interested (finally) in helping their children re-establish their identity and learn about their donor fathers:

Some mothers with a single child hope to find genetic siblings, perhaps to build a new kind of family. And one divorced mother says she dreams about meeting her donor, maybe falling in love, and having him become, at long last, the father to his own children: "Wouldn't that be a story and a half?"

Good luck. That's the kind of thing that's supposed to happen BEFORE you have someone's child!

What happens to the "social" fathers?

While many would have us believe that the relationship between donor sperm children and their "social" fathers is hunkey-dorey, the reality is often quite different. Here is an excerpt from Plotz on this subject:

The mothers seem ferociously close to their children but, with a couple of exceptions, the "social" fathers seem distant. In the divorced families, the mothers have assumed essentially all parenting responsibility. Three divorcees uttered almost exactly the same sentence to me: "My husband is not emotionally involved with the children." Even in most of the intact families, the mother dominates the relationship with the child. Ruby notes that her son has always called his father by his first name, never "Dad."

The mothers ignore—perhaps intentionally—a painful question: Is it the lack of genetic connection that chills the father-kid relationships? You can see why the mothers don't want to address this: If genetic distance causes the chill, then the mothers might feel responsible, because they chose the sperm bank. The moms tend to attribute the fathers' distance to temperament, to their inherent emotional unavailability.

But I suspect sociobiology matters enormously here. The mother has a genetic connection to her child. The father has none. The father also knows that his wife chose a man who is supposed to be smarter, healthier, and more physically gifted than him to father their child. It's easy to see how that could squash his paternal self-esteem and alienate him from his kids. And the artifice of pretending a child is your own flesh and blood must be wearing. ...

And get this, regarding why some moms told their kids they were the children of sperm donors:

Several moms say they told because they wanted to encourage their kids not to be like their fathers. One mother, for example, revealed her son's origin to him two weeks ago, after he told her he wanted to attend professional wrestling school instead of college. "I told him so that he would know that he is better than that, that his genes are better than his father's," says "Sarah."

(This case is especially awkward for another reason. Sarah, like another mom I talked to, told her son he is Nobel sperm-bank offspring, but did not tell the father that the son knows. In other words, the son knows his father is not his genetic father, but the father doesn't know that his son knows.)

Oh what tangled webs we weave. Of course, there's always ONE sure loser in these games: the child.

The Responsibility is With the Mother

It seems that often, the people who are most responsible for stealing a biological parent from their children's lives are the very ones who are supposed to be most loving and closest to them: their mothers. How very tragic. From the stuff I have read, also confirmed below by Plotz's research into the Nobel Sperm Bank, it is often the mothers that drive the engine that leads to donor insemination. Their biological "need" to have children, their desparate and yet self-centered hunger for children, is what often precipitates these travesties. Plotz writes:

The other defining quality of these repository families is that they are hugely matriarchal. All of the mothers I spoke to went to the repository because they wanted to. The husbands were reluctant or ambivalent. (Several had grown-up kids already and didn't want more.) "He had nothing to do with it," says "Joan," a California mother.

A "Practicing Roman Catholic" Donor Sperm Recipient

One of the women who accepted donor sperm from the genius clinic describes herself as a practicing Roman Catholic. She writes to Plotz:

As a practicing Roman Catholic (yes, I still am) I was terribly torn between my desire/need to create a family and the religious/ethical dilemma that this presented. I prayed for guidance. We, of course, considered adoption and actually started down that path but found ourselves emotionally and intellectually involved in Dr. Graham's quest.

How this woman convinces herself that she is a practicing Roman Catholic is beyond me. Going to church on Sunday doesn't make you a Catholic! It so turns out that the Catholic Church could not be more OPPOSED to the kind of family-breaking that this woman has done here through donor insemination.

The woman goes on to explain how "all you need is love," and her children are thus even LUCKIER than most children:

Yes, our children and I think the other Repository children have had every possible opportunity in life beginning with the gifts of being wanted and loved. Our children are as much a gift from God as any other children—not the "cold, utilitarian approach toward children" you described in your article.

This supposed "practicing Roman Catholic" actually delights in the genetic heritage of her children:

They are considered to be the best students in their small, parochial school and test right off the top of the charts on academics as well as music (both play instruments) and art. This is also not a surprise given that they receive lots of individual attention from dedicated teachers. I can't determine where the good genetics stop and the good environment begins—I am not sure that I need and/or want to.

Well, of course the children are happy. Especially since they believe their daddy is really their daddy. It turns out that this supposedly practicing Roman Catholic keeps the dark secret hidden from her innocents. They have no idea that they were conceived by donor sperm. What is your problem, lady? How self-centered! I have no doubt however that in time, the truth will come right out. And then...watch out!

One thing that my husband and I have not come to terms with is telling our children about their biological father and the role of the Repository. We have said nothing but we have kept the red capped vial that conceived each of them and the correspondence from Red #46. Within the family only their maternal grandparents know. Once we discussed when would be an appropriate age for disclosure and we couldn't agree—I don't want to ever tell them ...

On the Genius Sperm Bank Donor Fathers

One of the men who donated sperm for the Genius Sperm Bank was a businessman, whom Plotz describes as "an extremely successful businessman, someone who has launched several companies, including one that's almost a household name. He's rich, accomplished, athletic, and driven. He also has no children of his own." This impressive man explained to Plotz why he donated his sperm. He says:

The repository was perfect for me because I was not responsible for the kids. I really did not care. That is why I did not want to know how many kids I had.

I have not had children. I have never been interested in children. I acknowledged it and decided not to have the child suffer my disinterest. I left home very, very young. I left home after high school and never went back.

So you never think of your repository kids?

No, I guess I don't think of them. They are so anonymous to me—I guess because I have never been really interested in children anyway. I never followed up that much.

Are you afraid that one of the kids might manage to find you?

I would expect that they destroyed any documentation on that. But I might be thrilled. It would be nice to have it all turn out well. I would probably get immediately emotionally involved. It might be a bit of a kick.

Wow. So donating sperm was basically a way for this man to pass on his genes and have children without having to take care of them or be responsible. And then if they turned out well, it would be nice to meet them someday, he just "might" get a kick out of that.

Yeah, that's a real role model. Why are we fuelling this kind of parental irresponsibility and narcissism on a grand scale?

Another one of the donor fathers, Donor White, provides a different reason for having donated. According to Plotz, "He wrote that he and his wife had never been able to have their own children. He also wrote that he couldn't shake the memory of his own great-grandfather, who had fathered his only child just before going off to fight and die in the Civil War." Donor white has at least 13 children thorugh the sperm bank. He says:

The indirect success … is not like having your own children, of course, and I will likely never be able to see any of them in person, because I would be 75 years old before they become adults. Moreover, many of these children will likely never know that their adopted fathers are not their biological fathers. Still, I know these children are out there somewhere, and they are thought about often. I have seen very pleasing photographs of several of them, with their parents' permission, and have been able to form my own mental images of others while running on the beach in the quietness of the early morning. This is a rather poor substitute for having one's own children, but it does provide a sense of continuity that was not present before. In my view, a person's genes really belong to all of those many ancestors from whence they came, and we are only allowed to borrow and make use of them during our lifetimes. I have the satisfaction, then, of having been able, in an anonymous way, to connect the past with the future in a continuous line like a curve on a graph.

Plotz also writes about the sperm bank fathers that:

Most of the donors have something unusual in common: an unsteady personal life. The vast majority of men their age are married and the vast majority have children. Yet only two of the seven, I believe, are married. Only three have their own (non-repository) children. Only one of the fathers is married to the mother of his child. (At least two men had relationships that foundered in part because the woman desired children. "She wanted to have children and I did not. But sometimes I would be in the next bedroom donating sperm. She did not try to stop me, but she was not happy about it," says Average Guy.)

...Most of the Slate Seven remember their "work" for Graham with satisfaction. A couple are purely happy about it. They think fondly about any genetic kids. A couple are pleased with the venture in an intellectual way: They don't think much about any kids but praise Graham's goals. A couple feel slightly embarrassed by what they did. None thinks of himself as a father to the bank children. Even those who believe most strongly in heritability insist that fathers are made by nurture, not nature. Even so, all of them expressed some enthusiasm at the prospect of meeting their biological offspring, though they worry about tampering with the kids' families.

The Average Guy has the most perverse and complicated feelings about being a donor. He has kept obsessive track of his repository kids. He took notes every time a repository staffer contacted him to report a birth, allowing him to figure out his offspring's birthdays and sexes. He corresponded—anonymously through the repository—with one mother who used his sperm. Though the repository eliminated identifying information from the letters, he was able to figure out the first names and professions of her and her husband, as well as where they lived. (How did he find their hometown? you ask. The parents sent him a studio photo of their daughter: He searched photo studio catalogs to find the studio that used the logo embossed on the frame. Voilà! It was one in … I'm not telling. He showed me the photo: The girl's resemblance to Average Guy is astonishing.)

But despite his obsessive record keeping, Average Guy says he is often ashamed of what he has done. He is chagrined that he has selfishly avoided responsibility for raising kids. And he feels that spawning more than a dozen rugrats contradicts his own environmentalist ethos. "I am concerned about overpopulation and America's destructive appetite for resources. I have contributed to this problem in a big way by creating so many new consumers."

In one final way, the donors seem very much alike. All sound blue when they discuss their genetic offspring. They seem sad that they have kids they can't ever meet, can't watch grow up, can't ever help. They understand the melancholy reality of sperm donation. It's fatherhood without the responsibility, but also fatherhood without the delight.

Doron Blake, the Ramm children, and other Genius Designer Babies

Doron Blake, now 23 years old, is a designer baby. He is one of the people featured in the German film "Frozen Angels, which is supposed to be excellent but which I haven't seen. I want to get my hands on this film! It can be ordered here. Has anyone out there seen it who could comment on this blog? I'd love to know what people thought of it.

Doron is a bit of a star. He is the child of a an acknowledged genius (although not a Nobel Prize winner). The anonymous donor sperm that created him came from the notorious "Nobel Prize Sperm Bank" (officially called "Repository for Germinal Choice”) where the eugenic-minded California nutcase inventor Robert Graham recruited various scientific geniuses to donate sperm in order to improve the human race by making superbabies. Despite the notorious reputation Graham did not end up using Nobel Prize winners, as he decided they were too old for their sperm to be effective. Read a book on this subject by David Plotz, called "The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank" (2005), or read his online summary of the book in the making here. Some 240 children were eventually born using this sperm, but the majority are anonymous, although Plotz talks about several of the children in his online summary of the book.

One of the few known children from this sperm bank is Doron, who was the poster baby for this project to better the human race. His mother ("a middle-aged hippie and New Age psychologist living in Los Angeles") had him as she was nearing 40 and didn't have a suitable male partner in sight. Why should that stop a woman from having children these days? Rather than accepting her fate, she went to a clinic where she could "choose" the kind of baby she wanted - indeed, he would be the child of a genius!

Doron has an IQ of 180 and an extreme talent for music, as his mother had wanted. His mother has intentionally paraded him before the media since his wee years as a walking ad for what sperm donation can do, with all his accomplisments neatly catalogued for the public. When he was little he was on the cover of Mother Jones. He says of himself: "I was [Robert Graham's] emblem. I was the boy with the high IQ who was not screwed up. I was his ideal result."

His mother made him the center of her universe, induged and overindulged him. She even breast-fed him until 6 years old! Doron excelled in school, became a math prodigy, "qualified for a Los Angeles school for the gifted then won a full scholarship to Phillips Exeter in New Hampshire, one of the nation's best high schools."

But Doron was not automatically happy because of his privileged genetic parentage. In fact, quite the opposite. He says:

"Most of being a prodigy was negative. People have always been saying 'prodigy sperm child' all my life. But I am not that wonderful at anything. You feel a lot of pressure because you don't want to let people down, or you don't really feel free to be what you want to be.

"I don't feel safe with people I don't know, and I don't feel very confident with others. That may be the effect of having things expected of me."

So, Doron has rebelled against this genetic determination, and against the parental and societal expectations that he must have felt all his young life. Doron is going to Reed College, not a top school by any means (the only school he applied to), and majoring in comparative religions, not a hard science like his donor father. His ambition is to be a high school teacher. "He has rejected studying elite subjects at elite universities. Instead, Doron is an introverted student of psychology who plays three different instruments but has few social contacts. Doron prefers to investigate the universe alone—and to find his place in it on his own terms."

Indeed, Doron has learned a very important lesson about human worth the hard way. He says:

“It was a screwed-up idea, making genius people. The fact that I have a huge IQ does not make me a person who is good or happy. People come expecting me to have all these achievements under my belt, and I don’t. I have not done anything that special. I don’t think being intelligent is what makes a person. What makes a person is being raised in a loving family with loving parents who don’t pressure them. If I was born with an IQ of 100 and not 180, I could do just as much in my life. The thing I like best about myself is not that I’m smart but that I care about people and try to make other people’s lives better. I don’t think you can breed for good people.”

See the full article.

By the way, it's interesting to see what happened as Plotz wrote the book I mentioned above. According to the Times Literary Supplement:

Plotz soon found himself acting as detective and matchmaker, tracking down donors and brokering meetings with their offspring. These stories are the moral and emotional heart of the book. “Donor White” fathered nineteen children, but became deeply attached to the one whose mother sought him out. His reaction is the reason that sperm banks forbid such meetings; “donor offspring” become real children who laugh, play, have personalities, give you trouble, and make you proud. In this case, the father needed the daughter more than she needed him; she was a contented child who had no emotional void to fill.

Other children had a hole in their souls, and longed to find a “real” father unlike their distant stepdads, or to have any father at all. Many were disappointed. One young man, expecting to find a loving, genius dad, got Jeremy - “an obscure doctor”, Plotz writes, “whose notable accomplishment in life was leaving a wake of ex-wives and forgotten children”. Plotz also interviewed the faintly creepy son of a Nobelist who became a donor - the son, not the dad.

Doron doesn't seem to be very curious about his father, but he says that having a father would have helped him understand men. "I am not a masculine, macho guy. Maybe it would have been good to have more experience relating to men." Of course, Doron now knows who his father is. He says the media showed him an article about his father a while back (name John, a computer scientist of some sort) and he said he would not object to meeting him, but the meeting never happened.

Courtney Ramm, who is 17 (maybe 18 by now), is another one of the Nobel Sperm Bank children. She is a ballerina in New York and in 2006 she graduated from the Laguardia High School of Music and Art. She also has a sister and a brother and both are sperm donor babies. Her sister Leandra is a talented and accomplished singer. Her brother Logan (sperm donor Fuchsia) has autism. Read about their family here, in a brochure featuring her family (pictured below left).

Where are the rest of the Nobel Sperm Bank babies now? Plotz writes the following:

There are no Nobels and no criminals. All of them seem smart and engaged in the world. Most write a good e-mail and talk a good game on the phone. Two are quite prominent. The rising young businessman became a fabulously successful middle-aged businessman. The emerging political activist has become a semi-famous, sometimes controversial political activist. The two promising graduate students are now junior professors at decent universities. One of the prodigies has retired from a successful career in the intelligence trade to do consulting and muck about with high I.Q. organizations (groups like Mensa, but higher I.Q.'s required). The Average Guy has returned to grad school, where he's finishing a degree in environmental policy. Most of the Slate Seven remain connected to hard science, which would please Graham, who valued science and scorned just about everything else.

The second child prodigy, who has abandoned hard science, has transformed most radically. He donated in the early '80s when he was a math whiz. Today he writes, "In many respects I feel I am a failure. The closest I have come to conventional success was when I made my living writing term papers for rich kids at Columbia, NYU, etc." But I don't think he really feels like a failure: He has just discarded the notion that intelligence, especially analytical intelligence, is an important measure of life. He has abandoned math and academia to become an artisan. "I have gone from being an intellectual whore to … I dunno what … I will never win a Nobel Prize, but I don't care. I will never make any 'great' contribution to science. No matter. I have come to terms with myself and who I am. This is the best part of growing old."

Some other donors, too, seem to be grappling with the burden of expectation. Several seem conscious of how well they have done in their profession versus how well a "genius donor" ought to have done.

Sadly, at least some of these donor sperm children seem quite aware of their status as consumerized products, made-to-order for a certain feature: intelligence. One 14-year-old donor sperm baby writes of himself:

"the thought that I was genetically engineered to be intelligent might have provided further impetus to my drive to improve my grades, but I do not believe it was the main factor."