Donate generously: how sperm became a top commodity

It was the summer of 2012 when Adam, a 35-year-old IT consultant from Elephant and Castle, spotted an ad for the London Sperm Bank in the back pages of gay lifestyle bible Attitude magazine. It promised a free sperm count to anyone who gave a sample at its Harley Street clinic. His curiosity was piqued. ‘My mum had been taking the piss out of me for years for wearing tight-fitting pants and joked that I was sterilising myself. I thought, “I’ll go and see what happens.” I imagined a seedy basement somewhere, but it was really nice — the walls were painted in bright colours and everyone was friendly.’ He gave his sample in a room equipped with a sofa and stacks of porn (straight and gay). A staff member told him that few men had sperm sufficiently potent to make donors. But when his results came in around a week later, he did.

‘I spoke to a few people and I became aware how many were struggling to get pregnant. My brother and his wife had a miscarriage and I have lesbian friends who’d like to have children. I do a lot of charity work — this was another way to help people.’

So he began donating, visiting once or twice a week for three months until September. In February 2013, his sperm went up for sale to patients at the bank’s affiliated clinics, The London Women’s Clinic and The Bridge Centre (samples cost £850 per treatment). ‘It was a strange feeling. They wrote a profile for me, based on information I’d given them and talks I’d had with staff, saying I had brown hair, ran marathons and did charity work. It’s a bit like a dating agency — you think, “What if no one buys me?” ’ In fact, Adam’s samples sold out within weeks. ‘It was a shock — but it was really good, and exciting.’ He has since discovered he is now the father of seven offspring.

Sperm is a hot commodity in 21st-century Britain. It was recently reported that 500 sperm donors have fathered more than 6,200 children between them. Fifteen donors were parents to 20 or more. In the UK, sperm from one donor may be used to help up to ten families, which means that several will have created families of half-siblings. Next month, the first NHS-backed national sperm bank will open in Birmingham. For £300-£400 — less than half the cost at many private sperm banks — fertility clinics acting on behalf of their patients will be able to search an online database of up to 1,000 donors, choosing according to factors such as ethnicity, height, profession and hobbies. The chemically frozen sperm will be delivered by courier to the treatment centre; sample volume varies according to sperm count, though is typically around 0.5ml.

In 2010, the last year for which figures are available, 367 sperm donors registered in the UK, up from 244 in 2005. But it’s not enough. There are reports of waiting lists several years long; Laura Witjens, chief executive of the National Gamete Donation Trust, estimates it would take 800-1,000 British donors registering annually to satisfy demand. According to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the body that regulates fertility clinics, infertility affects about one in seven heterosexual couples. Donor insemination (DI) for women without a partner increased from 330 to 468 between 2007 and 2012; the number of women in same-sex couples having it rose by more than 20 per cent between 2010 and 2011. A total of 1,271 cycles of DI were performed on women who registered with a female partner in 2011, resulting in 161 babies being born.

Donors receive little in return for giving — they are compensated up to £35 ‘expenses’ per visit — so banks rely on altruism to keep stocks up. In 2005, British donors lost their right to anonymity; their children can find out their identity and attempt to contact them once they are 18. Donors also have to meet a strict set of criteria. They should be aged between 18 and 41, and are screened for sexually transmitted diseases and some genetic conditions. Sperm is tested for quality and motility (how good at ‘swimming’ to the egg they are), and given a freeze and thaw test. Donors must visit the clinic to make deposits weekly for up to six months. Before each time, they must refrain from sex for 72 hours to ensure a high sperm count. Very few complete the process, sometimes as little as two per cent. This goes some way to explain the shortage — though there is another issue. Sperm donation has an image problem. ‘If you’re a woman who donates your eggs, you’re a hero. If you’re a man, you’re the butt of jokes,’ says one 39-year-old donor I spoke to. ‘People say, “You’re a wanker and you get paid for it.” It’s stigmatised.’

News of the National Sperm Bank has been met with predictable outrage by some. One headline described it as a ‘sperm bank for lesbians’ — presumably because it will be accessible by same-sex couples and single women, as well as heterosexual couples. Kathy Gyngell, joint editor of The Conservative Woman blog, complained that such a policy reduced ‘babies to commodities’ and denied them ‘basic rights and needs, such as a stable family’.

Such critiques cut little ice with Lisa Mead, 42, a single mother who had her three-year-old son Lennie and his sister Bebe, nine months, with the help of a sperm donor. ‘Raising children is challenging for anyone, but being in a happy household with consistent parenting and no relationship turmoil I’m sure is a good thing. That might be two parents in a happy stable relationship, or a single parent just getting on with it.’ She’s right: repeated studies have found little correlation between the emotional development of donor-conceived children and the number of parents raising them, or parental sexual orientation.

Initially, Mead, a South London-based creative producer, applied to adopt a child from China. She was approved aged 34, but what had been described as a one-year process dragged on (China was pursuing a policy of encouraging more domestic adoptions). Two years later she turned to donor conception. She began treatment at a clinic in Central London. After three attempts failed, she transferred to another, Create Fertility. Following six more attempts, she got pregnant — but miscarried within 12 weeks. She became pregnant again on the 11th go, and two years later on the 13th. Both children were conceived with the same donor’s sperm, which she bought from a private sperm bank for £300 a time. She chose her donor because he had similar physical characteristics to her family — blue eyes, fair hair — and his profile (which doesn’t include a photograph to prevent identification) said he was athletic. ‘I thought it was a good gene to throw into the mix,’ she jokes. ‘For me it was important that there was the option for my children to make contact with the donor at 18, should they wish to. But even with open identity there is no guarantee that once they turn 18 the donor will be alive, or will want to pick up contact. It would be great if there’s a positive outcome — but we have to be prepared that there might not be.’

The fact is, few, if any, women undertake donor conception without serious consideration. There’s the cost of treatment to consider. This can be well over £1,000, with a success rate of 14-20 per cent for women under 35 and 11-14 per cent for those aged 35-37, not to mention a host of moral questions: when to tell the child they are donor-conceived (current advice suggests under the age of five is best), and how this fact will affect their future relationships. ‘In my experience, it’s always something that is done very responsibly,’ says Professor Geeta Nargund, medical director of Create Fertility.

The result of the UK sperm shortage is a growing number of women looking outside the HFEA-regulated system — for instance, heading abroad. Denmark is a particularly popular option; Danish donors still have anonymity, and there’s less of a stigma. Sperm is plentiful. Journalist Jessica McCallin, 40, went to the StorkKlinik in Copenhagen. She’d started thinking about having children several years earlier, initially assuming she’d pursue the conventional marriage-and-babies route. But that didn’t happen. Her treatment cost £460 — far less than it would in the UK — and was successful at the first attempt. Her three-year-old daughter Freya, blonde and blue-eyed, was the result. ‘I spoke to as many people as possible beforehand, and did a lot of research. I had no problem with it myself — my concern was the impact on the child. I expected concern [from others] about the absence of a father, but I’ve been overwhelmed by the positive response.’ She’s already talked about the donor with Freya: ‘She asked who her daddy was just before she was three. I said, “You don’t have a daddy, you have a donor.” She seemed fine — she just went off and watched cartoons. I’m very grateful to him; it’s extraordinary that it can happen like this.’ Other women pursuing this path go to the US and Spain.