Sperm Banks

JERUSALEM - The founder of the Tel Aviv-based specialty firm raves about his product with the same gusto distillers reserve for their top-notch scotch. He's particularly proud of his "premium" line. Sure, it costs a bit more, but it's targeted at a more discriminating client. Dr. Jacob Ronen is in the sperm business. Among other things, as head of Cryobank Israel, the country's largest private sperm bank, he guarantees that his stable of superior donors includes only tall, twentysomething ex-soldiers whose sperm has passed rigorous genetic testing.

JERUSALEM - The founder of the Tel Aviv-based specialty firm raves about his product with the same gusto distillers reserve for their top-notch scotch. He's particularly proud of his "premium" line. Sure, it costs a bit more, but it's targeted at a more discriminating client. Dr. Jacob Ronen is in the sperm business. Among other things, as head of Cryobank Israel, the country's largest private sperm bank, he guarantees that his stable of superior donors includes only tall, twentysomething ex-soldiers whose sperm has passed rigorous genetic testing.

Thousands of sperm samples were destroyed when the temperature rose undetected in a refrigeration tank at the University of Florida. Dr. R. Stan Williams, chief of the university medical college's division of reproductive endocrinology and infertility, said its "sperm bank is essentially wiped out." Most of the samples were from anonymous donors intended for use by couples with fertility problems. Up to 60 of the samples were from men who had banked their sperm in case they became impotent.

The Supreme Court justices struggled with applying an "old law to new technology" in a case that asks whether children whose father died before they were born or even conceived are entitled to survivors benefits under the Social Security law. The justices heard the case of Karen Capato, a New Jersey mother who in September 2003 gave birth to twins through in vitro fertilization 18 months after her husband, Robert, had died of cancer in Florida....

It boasts a Frozen Semen Newsletter, a mobile lab for on-site sperm collection and clients including police departments and the disabled. Yes, it's a sperm bank, but the Canine Cyrobank Inc. of West Los Angeles is a sperm bank of a different kind. It's for dogs only. With sperm collected from more than 500 dogs from across the nation, Canine Cyrobank is the largest sperm bank for dogs in the West and among the largest in the world.

In a case that hinges on the value of freezing sperm for later use, a Superior Court trial that opened this week is expected to determine whether men who use sperm banks should be compensated if the samples are lost. The lawsuit pits Carlos and Cathy Casas against the Santa Ana-based Fertility Center of California, which acknowledges that it lost two frozen samples of Carlos' sperm.

The Camp Pendleton Marine wanted to spend as much time as possible with his wife after getting 36 hours' notice that he was shipping out to the Persian Gulf. But he made time to drive to a medical lab near San Diego State University where he entered a first-floor office, checked in with a receptionist and took a sterile collection jar into the men's room. A half hour later, he and his wife were en route home, with his sperm safely stored.

Ten years after the birth of the first baby from his sperm bank, Robert Graham has a 1 1/2-year waiting list of potential mothers, a wall full of pictures of beautiful children and a shortage of good men. Although frustrated by the lack of tangible evidence that his theory holds up in real life, Graham remains captivated by the controversial notion that he can improve the human race by matching wanna-be mothers with the sperm of some of society's most scholarly men.

A white mother who claims she was mistakenly inseminated with the sperm of a black man rather than the sperm of her late white husband is suing her doctor and a Manhattan sperm bank. In a negligence suit against Idant Laboratories and Dr. Hugh Melnick of Advanced Fertility Services, Julia Skolnick of Queens contended that her 3-year-old daughter has already become the target of racial ridicule and discrimination, court papers said.

When Julie Peterson decided to have a baby two years ago, she picked a tall, blond, blue-eyed Danish engineer as a sperm donor to match her own Scandinavian heritage. But when she went back to the sperm bank to use the same donor to have another child, she was stunned to discover that the federal government had made it impossible. "I just cried," said Peterson, 43, who lives in North Carolina. "I was in complete shock. I hadn't thought about anything but having another baby with this donor.

In a marriage of modern science and the culture of celebrity, a Los Angeles-based sperm bank is grouping donors according to which famous people they resemble. On its website, the California Cryobank asks: "Have you ever wondered if your favorite donor looks like anyone famous? You know how tall he is and his hair and eye color, but wouldn't it be great to have an idea of what he really LOOKS like? Now you can find out with a CLICK of your mouse!" Browsers are typically directed to pictures of two or three celebrity lookalikes.

When Julie Peterson decided to have a baby two years ago, she picked a tall, blond, blue-eyed Danish engineer as a sperm donor to match her own Scandinavian heritage. But when she went back to the sperm bank to use the same donor to have another child, she was stunned to discover that the federal government had made it impossible. "I just cried," said Peterson, 43, who lives in North Carolina. "I was in complete shock. I hadn't thought about anything but having another baby with this donor.

Thousands of sperm samples were destroyed when the temperature rose undetected in a refrigeration tank at the University of Florida. Dr. R. Stan Williams, chief of the university medical college's division of reproductive endocrinology and infertility, said its "sperm bank is essentially wiped out." Most of the samples were from anonymous donors intended for use by couples with fertility problems. Up to 60 of the samples were from men who had banked their sperm in case they became impotent.

Some servicemen heading to the Persian Gulf are leaving more than just their wives and fiancees behind: They're creating living legacies frozen in liquid nitrogen. On their own initiative, about 16 troops have stopped by California Cryobank, a private sperm bank located in a discreet Westwood office building, to make a "deposit" during the past few weeks as they prepared to go overseas. That number exceeds the dozen soldiers who visited the clinic in all of 2002. Their motivation?

Workers at a Romanian car factory have decided to donate sperm to get the debt-ridden plant out of the red. "Our feasibility study shows that if 1,000 workers donate their sperm for several months, we can get enough funds to pay part of the plant's debts," said Ion Cotescu, trade union leader at ARO Campulung. He said the decision was made after media reports said a fertility clinic in the western city of Timisoara offered donors $50 a visit. The plant's debts are put at $20 million.

Marcus has two moms. And once the 15-year-old reaches his 18th birthday, Marcus expects to meet his ... well, what's the right term for the mystery man who provided the sperm that made his life possible? "The donor" is how Marcus Liefert thinks of him now. Certainly not "dad," even though Marcus imagines they might go out to a ballgame someday. How about "genetic father"? "No. I know that's biologically true, but that's not the term I would use," Marcus says.

Somewhere out there, in the sprawl of greater Los Angeles, the man who gave 8-year-old Brittany Johnson an incurable kidney disease may dwell. At least, that's what Brittany's family suspects. They have no way of knowing, not yet. They don't even know his name. He is, to them, still a number: "Donor 276." As a 24-year-old law clerk in 1986, he walked into the California Cryobank in Century City to donate his sperm for pocket money.

War is always good for the immortality market. with some men dying and others certain to, religious and patriotic orators inevitably assure us that the honored dead will live on in heaven, or at least in the hearts and minds of fellow citizens and co-religionists. This sort of immortality, however, is a little on the iffy side. Fortunately, a more tangible, genuinely biological immortality already is available to men, at sperm banks.

At the Miura ranch, a revered patch of the bullfighting world, bulls roam idyllic fields dotted with oak trees and wild asparagus as death awaits them in the ring. Nasty, smart and genetically unique, the animals bred at this compound near Seville also face a threat outside the arena--shifting bullfight tastes--and could conceivably die out, aficionados fear. So to protect Miuras and other rare bloodlines, Spain is building up a bull sperm and embryo bank. "It's part of our national heritage.