Swipe Right for Daddy: Modern Marketing of Sperm and the Need for Honesty and Transparency in Advertising

• February 26, 2020

• Sheila Elston

Abstract 

Sperm banks have tried to reproduce the online dating experience— creating slick online donor profiles that include romance-novel worthy descriptions, childhood pictures, and donor match tools to help the aspiring parents select the perfect man for the job. Unlike online dating, however, the consumer has to take the glowing personal descriptions, assurances of donor health, and genetic fitness of the largely anonymous donors on faith. The purchaser has to trust that the sperm bank follows state-of-the-art laboratory and ethical procedures, has screened and tested the donor’s mental, physical, and genetic health, and has verified the claims made by the donor before advertising the donor as healthy and his sperm safe for use. Unfortunately, reports of blatant misrepresentations, children inheriting disabling diseases from their unscreened donor fathers, tragic laboratory mistakes, or donor-conceived offspring discovering they have 30, 70, or more than 100 siblings continue to make headlines. Utilizing existing laws, the FTC and FDA can coordinate their actions to enforce advertising laws and ensure that sperm banks’ online representations about the donor’s qualities and the sperm bank’s practices provide complete, fair, and accurate information. By requiring each sperm vendor to verify and provide the essential information about the donor, the qualities of the sperm for sale, and the sperm bank’s policies and processes, purchasers can make more informed decisions, which will direct the market toward the vendors with state-of-the-art practices and policies, improving the health and safety for donor conceived children.

ARTICLE TAGS

• Life Sciences