Post Date December, 03 2023
China has established a "human sperm bank" to help men store sperm and prevent infertility caused by environmental factors. As soon as this news came out, someone immediately raised a question: Will storing sperm lead to the next generation of siblings getting married?
Experts tell us that human sperm banks cannot be built casually. The country has strict regulations on building human sperm banks, and only one can be built in a province. Currently, there are only 13 human sperm banks in the country.
Nowadays, the majority of sperm donors are college students. Due to the much higher standards for sperm donation compared to fertility standards, there are relatively few people who can pass the physical examination. Men who have already worked face high social pressure, coupled with unhealthy habits, and their sperm quality is often not high. However, the college student population has relatively fewer bad habits and a higher qualification rate.
Even among college students, the qualification rate is only around 30%, while the male qualification rate in society is less than 20%. The reason is that sperm storage must pass five levels:
The first level: preliminary examination, which means that the age, educational background, height requirements, etc. must be met;
The second level: physical examination, conducting a series of comprehensive health examinations, including routine health examinations, specialized examinations, family genetic disease investigations, and mental health tests;
The third pass: preliminary semen test, testing the semen of volunteers to test sperm motility;
The fourth level: blood testing, more rigorous and detailed blood testing, as well as semen bacterial culture. Qualified individuals can become volunteers;
The fifth step: retest. Many viruses have an incubation period. For example, there is a window period from AIDS infection to AIDS virus detection. Therefore, the sperm must be stored for 6 months, and then the volunteers should be invited back to recheck the body and semen to ensure that the sperm provided by the volunteers half a year ago is OK.
Will the next generation "get married"
Some couples who want to receive sperm from human sperm banks are worried that their children will fall in love and get married as siblings when they grow up, leading to ethical issues, "experts say.
According to national regulations, a volunteer can only donate sperm to a human sperm bank once in their lifetime nationwide. The donor is required to sign an informed consent form when making the decision to donate sperm, and the donated sperm can be used to successfully conceive up to five women. To avoid repeated sperm donation, the sperm bank will check the ID number and set up a fingerprint identification system before the volunteers donate sperm.
The informed consent form also stipulates that parents of children born with human sperm bank sperm must undergo pre marital screening before marriage. If the female partner was born through borrowing sperm, it is necessary to check if the partner's father has a sperm donation record to ensure that there are no blood related issues between the male and female partners. The sperm donation file will be permanently saved, enough for three generations to check if there are any close relatives.
According to relevant information, some foreign countries have donated sperm to 10 women for successful conception, which is much more than in China. For example, in the United States, a volunteer's sperm was used to 10 women, but there was no issue of "sibling marriage". We are much more cautious than them, and it is unlikely to have ethical issues.
(Intern Editor: Cai Junyi)
