Posted on 08/20/2003 9:03:22 AM PDT by bedolido
The birth of the first internet spermbank baby was announced yesterday - a healthy boy whose arrival exposes a hole in the regulations that govern fertility treatment. The 10lb 2oz boy was the result of a purchase of sperm by a couple in the south-east of England from a British-based website which claims to be the only one of its kind.
ManNotIncluded.com is able to bypass all the rules and the scrutiny that fertility clinics have to endure because it does not offer treatment - it acts only as an introduction agency, to bring together men willing to sell their anonymised sperm and those, usually lesbian couples and single women, who want to buy it.
This baby, however, was born to a heterosexual married couple who also want to remain anonymous and bring up the child as genetically their own.
John Gonzalez, the former City headhunter who is the website's founder, said: "We are delighted at the fantastic news that the first baby has been born as a direct result of using our groundbreaking service. MNI is about giving all women the chance to have children without fear of prejudice or discrimination. Here's to the birth of countless more MNI babies over the coming weeks and months."
He said the new parents were the only heterosexual couple on his books. There are 19 other women now more than three months' pregnant after using the service. This couple came to the website, he said, after treatment at conventional clinics was unsuccessful.
"This couple have been treated apallingly by a couple of private clinics. They have been through three or four direct insemination attempts and two egg-sharing IVF treatments."
Nonetheless, the year-old website is unlikely to be heavily used by heterosexual couples. If the fertility problem is the man's inability to produce any quantity of sperm, most can be helped by an increasingly commonly used technique called ICSI, which extracts a single sperm and injects it directly into the woman's egg. The treatment is expensive, and some clinics invite women to give away half the eggs they produce under the stimulation of drugs to encourage ovulation in exchange for cut-price treatment - known as egg-sharing.
The new baby, said Mr Gonzalez, is "a very, very healthy bouncing baby boy", whose arrival he hoped would silence some of the website's critics. "So many people who criticised us were expecting us to deliver babies with two heads and six arms," he said.
But rightwing morality groups and the fertility regulators will not be appeased. The Human Fertility and Embryology Authority says it has no power over such an internet sperm provider, but was concerned about its activities.
"The problem we have is that because it is fresh sperm, it doesn't fall within our remit. It is almost like a loophole," said a spokeswoman. "It certainly needs to be looked at but it would be for parliament to decide whether they would like to change it."
The HFEA is concerned that the sperm donor may not have been adequately screened for diseases the child could inherit. And while men who donate sperm to regulated clinics are legally not considered to be the father of any child, that may not be so for internet sperm donors, it adds.
"The HFEA cannot guarantee good laboratory practices and safe testing of donated sperm from unlicensed donation services. Women wishing to use donated sperm are advised to do so through an HFEA licensed clinic where donated sperm is thoroughly tested and legal parentage is set down in law," said Suzi Leather, HFEA chairman.
Jack Scarisbrick of the Life organisation is another opponent of the website service. "One has to welcome the birth of a child but the whole procedure is horrible," he said. "Children are far too important to be the result of sperm bought by email."
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