MapMuse - Locate Sperm Banks and Sperm Donor Programs Near You

...or straws of holding between 0.4 and 1.0 ml and cryogenically preserved in liquid nitrogen tanks. There seems to be no limit on how long frozen sperm can be stored, and a baby has been conceived in the UK using sperm frozen for 21 years[1]. Before freezing, sperm may be prepared so that it can be used for intra-cervical insemination (ICI), intra-uterine insemination (IUI) or for IVF(or assisted reproduction) (ART).

Use

Sperm supplied by a sperm bank may be used where a woman's partner is infertile or where he carries genetic disease. Increasingly, donor sperm is used to achieve a pregnancy where a woman has no male partner, including a rising percentage of single or coupled lesbians. Sperm from a sperm donor may also be used in surrogacy arrangements and for creating embryos for embryo donation. Donor sperm may be supplied by the sperm bank directly to the recipient to enable a woman to perform her own artificial insemination or, more usually, to a woman through a registered medical practitioner who will perform an appropriate method of insemination or IVF treatment using the donor sperm in order for the woman to become pregnant.

Sperm banks may supply other sperm banks or a fertility clinic with donor sperm to be used for achieving pregnancies. Sperm banks may also supply sperm for research or educational purposes.

In countries where sperm banks are allowed to operate, the sperm donor will not usually become the legal father of the children he produces as the result of the use of the sperm he donates, but he will be the 'biological father' of such children. In cases of surrogacy involving embryo donation, a form of 'gestational surrogacy', the 'commissioning mother' or the 'commissioning parents' will not be biologically related to the child and may need to go through an adoption procedure.

As with other forms of third party reproduction, the use of donor sperm from a sperm bank gives rise to a number of moral, legal and ethical issues.

Men may also use a sperm bank to store their own sperm for future use particularly where they anticipate traveling to a war zone or having to undergo chemotherapy which might damage the testes.

Selection

Sperm banks make information available about the sperm donors whose donations they hold in the sperm bank to enable customers to select the donor whose sperm they wish to use. This information is often available by way of an on-line catalog. A sperm bank will also usually have facilities to help customers to make their choice and they will be able to advise on the suitablitity of donors for individual donors and their partners.

Where the recipient woman has a male partner she may prefer to use sperm from a donor whose physical features are similar to those of her partner. In many cases, the choice of a donor with the correct blood group will be paramount with particular considerations involving the use of sperm from donors with negative blood groups. If a surrogate is to be used, such as where the customer is not intending to carry the child, considerations about her blood group etc will also need to be taken into account. Information made available by a sperm bank will usually include the race, height, weight, blood group, health and eye colour of the donor. Sometimes information about his age, family history and educational achievements will also be given. Some sperm banks make a 'personal profile' of a donor available and occasionally more information may be purchased about a donor, either in the form of a DVD or in written form. Catalogs usually state whether samples supplied in respect of a particular donor have already given rise to pregnancies, but this is not necessarily a guide to the fecundity of the sperm since a donor may not have been in the program long enough for any pregnancies to have been recorded.

The catalog will also state whether samples of sperm are available for ICI, IUI and/or ART use. IUI and ART are 'washed' samples, ART samples being those prepared exclusively for IVF use and containing a concentration of highly motile sperm which are fewer in number than those in other vials.

Sperm banks may also allow people to choose the sex of their child or to choose what characteristics they want their child or children to inherit. This is an example of selective breeding.