Is it right that autistic men can't donate sperm?

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I just found out that you can't donate sperm if you have autism. Do you think this is right?

I personally don't because it perpetuates the social stigma and ignorance that autism is necessarilly an 'affliction'.

Link, Please?

Let me review the 'evidence' before I offer my opinion.

I hate linking to the Daily Mail, but against my better judgement and principles, here it is

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ealth.html

I like how the Daily Mail closed comments for the article.

First, it's a law in the Netherlands. Is Asperger's Syndrome really classified as an 'Illness' there?

Second, the science behind the law is flawed ...



(What next; mandatory sterilization for people on the Autistic spectrum?)

Third, I say that people should stay out of the Netherlands if they have AS and want to have any children.

No, i think the article bent it out of shape a bit, though depending on country, theres must be disclosure, but each doner would be i think assessed in risk of passing on more severe and debilitating genetic syndromes as a priority.

though theres little regulation, this is an interesting aryicle on things. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/233952.php

well, this apparently isn't just the Netherlands. I got this story off the back of the news that a certain individual from Ruckersville, Virginia (who shall not be named) recently had his donation rejected because of his ASD.

I'd assume that any mental disorder is grounds for disqualification.

Makes sense.

I really hate defending this article because the language is horrible but here it goes. The article is over 3 years old. There is usually is a time limit for posting comments.

The problem is that autism can be genetically inherited and if the donor has Asperger's, there's no guarantee that the children resulting from that will only have mild or high-functioning autism either. Most women going to sperm banks most probably don't want to have children with autism or any child with special needs, so the sperm bank would likely reject the donation because nobody would want it. Additionally, I wouldn't really want the sperm donation to result in some people having autistic children when they can't cope with children with special. If people are going to have autistic children, then I would much rather it be to parents who able to cater to them.

One autism doctor, a psychologist, once told me that two AS adults may have a lower fuctioning child. He advises his ASD patients never to have children with other ASD people.

So, there may be a legitimate purpose to screening for an ASD.

Then use something like donotlink to share the article without boosting their search engine rankings.

I don't intend to move, at least not for that reason.

I would think that Asperger's is classified as an "illness" here, in the sense that I was diagnosed by a psychologist and a psychiatrist. However, we use the word "stoornis", which is much closer to "disorder" than to "illness".

I wouldn't necessarily take his advice. At least autistic people are more likely than NT's to understand an autistic child. I remember in his book "An Anthropologist on Mars" (the book from which I first learned about Temple Grandin), Oliver Sacks mentioned that he had visited such a family in California, where not only were the parents autistic but all of their children as well (their youngest was even lower functioning). In the book, he called them the "B" family.

Is there an actual reason that we should give a damn about this?

No one is stopping the rare autistic guy who manages to get a wife, or a gf, or a mistress, from knocking her up the old fashioned way. It just one more rule being added to the long list of already existing limits on who can sell sperm to strangers for money. The rules (including the upper age limit of 35 or something like that) already forbid most of the male population from going into sperm doner business. So who cares?

I googled around and could only find a law in the Netherlands pertaining to anonymity. It has recently become law that sperm donation centers can only accept non-anonymous donors. This has led to a drop in donations which has led to a shortage that has driven women to seek men off the internet- the situation that is described in the article. Because the internet makes anonymity still possible, the women didn't know the man they got sperm from had Aspergers. They were angry when they found out.

There may be a law against autistic men donating sperm to clinics in the Netherlands but I couldn't find one through google- only this new law against donating anonymously.

What is actually happening (in the article) isn't that autistic men aren't allowed to donate sperm (this guy did just that) but rather that many women don't want sperm from a man who is autistic. That is their choice. But it isn't a law (that I could find).