In Harvard Square, the sun is shining and the street is packed. There’s a parade on, the sidewalk jammed with foot traffic, and people have lined up outside an ATM to withdraw cash for souvenirs.But as they get their $20 bills for the incense stands and food stalls, little do they realize that in the next building over, behind a door marked “private,” one of the world’s largest banks is accepting billions in deposits every day. Not, as you might have guessed, in dollars.
The California CryoBank (CCB) is a leader in the sperm donation industry: with offices in Los Angeles, Palo Alto, and Cambridge, CCB sells approximately 2500 ampoules of semen monthly, in all 50 states and in 28 countries. At $330 per shot, this trade in 1.8-trillion sperm brings in nearly $10 million a year.
In 2000, the Wall Street Journal estimated the global sperm business to be worth almost $100 million a year. But with the growth of an Internet industry catering to alternative couples and unpartnered women, the sperm market stands to explode in the next decade.
The reasons people need sperm are obvious: according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, 10 to 15 percent of males worldwide have fertility problems; lesbian couples and single women have no sperm at all; and there are millions of other women who, because of illnesses like cancer, need to fertilize their eggs fast — with or without a husband.
The motivation for donors is less transparent. It’s not an easy process: CCB’s application forms are long and personal, and the company rejects 90 percent of the men who apply. Still, there’s far from a paucity of interest: up to 30 guys a day try to sell their goods just to CCB’s Cambridge branch. Furthermore, guys advertising their sperm are all over the Web.
It certainly isn’t for the money: men make an average of $75 a shot for sperm that sells for up to $2400 retail. To find out just why guys do it, I dropped my drawers (and what little pride I have) and stepped into what Dr. Cappy Rothman, CCB’s founder, calls the sperm bank’s “erotic masturbatory chamber.”
Onan and on
Sperm donation is as old as Western history. The first recorded case came in Genesis: when Onan’s brother was killed, it was his duty to continue his brother’s line by impregnating his sister-in-law, Tamar. Instead, Onan pulled out, and Tamar forced Judah, Onan’s dad, to “lay by the side of the road.” Sperm donorship was born.
According to Debora L. Spar, a professor at Harvard Business School, the medical industry took its time catching up. At first, if a couple had problems conceiving, it was assumed that the woman’s wiring was off. When scientists figured out that men might have something to do with it too, the “cures” included, yes, guys, shock therapy.
Eventually it occurred to doctors that it could be the semen itself: low sperm counts — slacker sperm. So doctors started collecting sperm from their friends and giving it to married couples in need. Spar, the author of The Baby Business: How Money, Science, and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception (Harvard Business School Press, 2006), says that the first “unapologetically commercial clinic” opened in 1970.
The California CryoBank followed in 1975, when Rothman, a urologist who specializes in male infertility, was confronted by more and more women blaming their infertile husbands for the hole in their family lives. “We’d be in my office,” Rothman recalls, “and the woman would look at him and say, ‘Because I married you, I can’t get pregnant?’ ”
That cottage industry has since blossomed into a major business. As Spar writes, the number of US sperm banks increased to 100 in 1999, up from 17 in 1988. And as more people have more success with sperm donation, more people feel like it might be for them. Says Rothman, “When I started, 98 percent of my clients were married couples. Now, nearly 50 percent are single women. [Also], lesbians are less chastised for having children, and it’s a growing population that is becoming equal to that of heterosexual couples.”
The biggest change in the business of sperm donation is the Internet. Historically, each doctor would pick an appropriate donor for a couple; now a woman doesn’t even have to step foot in a clinic: CCB’s Web site contains huge donor databases searchable by any desired trait. Like perusing Match.com, women need only enter a few details — height, ethnicity, or temperament — and out comes a slew of donor information that includes family history and a “personality review.”
For a price, you can get 40-page reports in a donor’s own handwriting, videos, baby pictures. And much like a customized Dell laptop, the sample will reach the customer’s house, depending on the shipping option, in just a few days.
Why I make the cut as a donor
Not surprisingly, the guys whose sperm is most highly sought more closely resemble Abercrombie & Fitch models than bookish journalists. Denmark — think Scandinavian blond — exports far more sperm than any other market.
