For men and women struggling with infertility and unable to get pregnant on their own, independent online websites offering free sperm donors may seem like a quick fix to start a family.

Some donors purport to be interested in helping infertile couples, single women, and lesbians start a family, but recipients have no way of knowing if the donor is a seed-spreading egomaniac, altruistic nice guy, or worst of all part of a fly-by-night online scam.

“There have been several sites popping up on the Internet giving away free sperm,” Dr. Susan Trout, a fertility physician at Colorado Reproductive Endocrinology said. “The problem is that it isn’t always tested, as per FDA regulations, to make sure the donor doesn’t have HIV, hepatitis, gonorrhea, syphilis, or other diseases.”

While the Food and Drug Administration regulates the terms under which free sperm can be obtained, there has been no official legal crackdown on free sperm donors because technically- it’s not illegal. And while the FDA has established standards for the testing of sperm and the eligibility of donors, not all websites may be adhering to the law.

Dr. Betsy Cairo at CryoGam Colorado, a Loveland, Colorado based laboratory which offers sperm banking, donor sperm, and embryo and oocyte storage wants patients to be educated on the risks.

“There was a situation in California where a man was selling sperm off the Internet and was shut down,” Cairo said. “Sperm is a transplantable tissue, regulated by the FDA, so women need to understand that they can be at risk for sexually transmitted infections.”

In 2005, the FDA established standards for sperm donation “to create a unified registration and listing system for establishments that manufacture human cells, tissues, and cellular and tissue-based products and to establish donor-eligibility, current good tissue practice, and other procedures to prevent the introduction, transmission, and spread of communicable diseases.”

But some donors are slipping through the cracks and may not be complying.

In addition to possibly not being screened for disease, some sperm donors on free sites may not even sign away their consensual rights to parenthood. The recipient of the sperm may not even know that they are at risk of a paternity lawsuit.

“I had a patient myself who almost fell victim to one of these guys,” Trout adds. “Luckily, she asked me about it first.”

Sperm donors who may have been rejected by credible sperm banks could instead choose to become donors on the so-called “grey market” because they did not pass the rigorous psychological and physical standards upheld by legitimate fertility clinics.

Because of this, consumers cannot be sure if they are getting safe sperm unless they deal with a reputable fertility practice.

The Good Egg

Determining when life begins is complicated by a process that unfolds months before a sperm meets an egg. For more than 20 years, Dr. Van Blerkom has been trying to understand the story that egg cells are telling, and although the tale is far from complete, some compelling new clues to early development have emerged.

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Study Finds Way to Pick Healthiest Embryos

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists said on Wednesday they may have found a good way to identify the healthiest embryos for use in making test-tube babies – and discovered some basic biology in the process.

Little structures called microtubules in the egg cell may be key, infertility specialist Dr. Sam Alexander of Colorado Reproductive Endocrinology and colleagues at the University of Colorado report.

Writing in the December, issue of the journal Human Reproduction, Alexander and colleagues said the microtubules transport genetic material called mitochondrial DNA, which is found in eggs.

Embryos with symmetrical microtubules seemed to be more likely to survive attempts at in-vitro fertilization (IVF), they found.

“I believe the take-home message is that these findings may help us determine the embryo quality at an earlier stage,” Alexander said in a statement.

“We feel that using methods to judge embryo quality in the first three days of culture is a much more sensible and intelligent approach than the five-day, survival of the fittest, embryo approach.”

Biology professor Jonathan Van Bierkom of the University of Colorado, who worked on the study, said if the microtubule arrays in the egg cell do not mirror each other at the very first division of the cell, half of the tiny embyo, known technically as a blasomere, may not have enough of the structures.

“Eventually there may not be enough mitochondria in the blastomeres to produce a healthy embryo,” he said.

When a couple seeks to have a baby through IVF, doctors create many embryos in a laboratory dish, and then try to select the healthiest ones to implant in the mother’s womb.

Screening for microtabules might offer a good way to do this check, the researchers suggested.

Human Preimplantation Embryo Selection

Dr. Trout and Dr. Van Blerkom helped write this comprehensive overview which sheds light on the ever-expanding techniques that are being employed and evaluated with regard to embryo selection.

To view, please click here

Essential IVF basic research and clinical applications

Read about Dr. Van Blerkom’s text book on IVF.
To read about his text book, please click here