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PETBioNewsNewsAustralian politicians asked for sperm

BioNews

Australian politicians asked for sperm

Published 9 June 2009 posted in News and appears in BioNews 291

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BioNews

Image by Bill Sanderson via the Wellcome Collection, © Wellcome Trust Ltd 1990. Depicts Laocoön and his family (from Greek and Roman mythology) entwined in coils of DNA.
Image by Bill Sanderson via the Wellcome Collection, © Wellcome Trust Ltd 1990. Depicts Laocoön and his family entwined in coils of DNA (based on the figure of Laocoön from Greek and Roman mythology).

An Australian fertility clinic has written to 25 male politicians asking them to donate sperm. Monash IVF clinic in Melbourne, Victoria, has asked all male MPs under the age of 45 if they have 'ever thought of becoming sperm donors'. The clinic's medical director, Gab Kovacs, says he was inspired...

An Australian fertility clinic has written to 25 male politicians asking them to donate sperm. Monash IVF clinic in Melbourne, Victoria, has asked all male MPs under the age of 45 if they have 'ever thought of becoming sperm donors'. The clinic's medical director, Gab Kovacs, says he was inspired by a recent celebrity campaign to recruit organ donors. The letter states: 'We hope that if some of the leading role models within our community become donors, others may follow suit'.


Stocks of donor sperm have apparently been falling in the state of Victoria since 1998, when a new law ruled that donors must agree to reveal their identities when a child turns 18. Kovacs said that before the new law came into force, Monash clinic had around 20 new donors per year, whereas only five were recruited last year. The clinic now has 100 clients seeking sperm, but only 13 donors.


Several clinicians in the UK have expressed fears that the numbers of egg, sperm and embryo donors will fall once new regulations removing anonymity come into force in April. The changes mean that anyone born from donations made after 5 April will be able to ask for identifying information about the donor, when they reach the age of 18. Some fertility experts predict that the decline in the number of donations will lead to infertile couples going abroad for treatment.


The Department of Health has launched a new campaign, developed in conjunction with the National Gamete Donation Trust (NGDT), which it hopes will raise public awareness about the benefits of egg and sperm donation. It is expected that future sperm donors are likely to be older men, who already have their family and who are motivated purely by altruism. The NGDT also hopes to raise the profile of egg donation, to encourage more women to come forward to donate their eggs.


Last November, the UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) launched a public consultation on sperm, egg and embryo donation. It is seeking views on issues such as whether there should be limits on the number of children per donor, how donor's characteristics should be matched with patients, and how much compensation donors should be paid. One proposal is that compensation for egg donors should be raised to £1000, in recognition of the more invasive nature of the donation process, and to encourage more women to donate. The consultation takes the form of an online questionnaire, available via the HFEA's website, and is open until 4 February 2005.

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Image by Bill McConkey via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts sperm swimming towards an egg.
CC BY 4.0
Image by Bill McConkey via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts sperm swimming towards an egg.
Comment
18 June 2009 • 2 minutes read

How good are we at recruiting sperm donors?

by Stephen Harbottle and 2 others

One in six couples have fertility problems. Male factors are known to be responsible for about 30 per cent of these cases, and are associated with another 30 per cent in combination with female factors. Despite the advent of artificial reproductive techniques - intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) in particular - the demand...

Image by Bill McConkey via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts sperm swimming towards an egg.
CC BY 4.0
Image by Bill McConkey via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts sperm swimming towards an egg.
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Gamete donation campaign to be launched in UK

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The UK's Department of Health is to launch a new national campaign to recruit egg and sperm donors in the country. It hopes to prevent further shortages of donors, a problem that has been exacerbated by new regulations, coming into force in April, which will remove anonymity from all future...

Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
CC0 1.0
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
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The UK's first 'human egg bank' is set to open this week, according to an article published in the Mail on Sunday newspaper. It is said that the bank will store and offer for sale 'more than 1500 frozen eggs', which 'infertile couples can buy for their hereditary characteristics such...

Image by Bill McConkey via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts sperm swimming towards an egg.
CC BY 4.0
Image by Bill McConkey via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts sperm swimming towards an egg.
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9 June 2009 • 2 minutes read

HFEA launches donor conception consultation

by BioNews

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has launched a public consultation on sperm, egg and embryo donation. It is seeking views on issues such as limits on the number of children per donor, how donor's characteristics should be matched with patients, and how much compensation donors should be paid...

Image by Bill Sanderson via the Wellcome Collection, © Wellcome Trust Ltd 1990. Depicts Laocoön and his family (from Greek and Roman mythology) entwined in coils of DNA.
Image by Bill Sanderson via the Wellcome Collection, © Wellcome Trust Ltd 1990. Depicts Laocoön and his family entwined in coils of DNA (based on the figure of Laocoön from Greek and Roman mythology).
News
9 June 2009 • 2 minutes read

Donor anonymity to be removed in UK

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The UK government has announced that people who donate eggs, sperm or embryos in the UK are to lose their right to anonymity. The change to the existing law - which currently does not allow children conceived using donor sperm to discover the identity of donors, but only to find out...

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