UK's largest sperm bank caught trying to practice eugenics

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This shows the predictable fact that whether the free market weeds us out to extinction or not depends on whether we're widely perceived as disabled or just different. It looks like the former is winning, and it'll probably ensure a future devoid of all sorts of quirky people like there were in the past, some of whom achieved great things that wouldn't have been possible had they been normal.

Leave it to nature.
It could be that by weeding out aspergers traits misinformed people prevent a positive evolutionary step?

Is all this channelling of humans to conform with what some peoples opinions of `normal` are?
and cannot this normality be contrived and influenced by the darker unelightened forces of the media or religious and politicial thought?

Strictly business. In the US, fertility treatments can run upwards of $30K. They have a book of donors with eye/hair/build/educational background/ethnic background listed. If I can get the sperm of a 6'2", athletic neurosurgeon resident, I would expect the bank would screen for all of the above. This coming from a bipolar person, who would be screened out from the get go if I was able to donate sperm.

Sorry, the wealthy are going to load the dice of not getting a special needs children if they can help it.

Like some really moneyed couple would sign up to have potential roll the dice of maybe having an autistic child if they could help it.

Donor #5434 history of Asperger (or whatever is used now), OCD, ADHD and anxiety. College educated, but no employment history. Age 30 (banks do list thinks like the job/s you do/or have done.)

I can't image that sample flying off the shelf for a people that is spending $20K to conceive.

Just like everyone is judged on the dating meat market, the same goes on in the donor book. The same goes on with the photolistings for adoption. A 4 year old, honey blonde girl with no obvious mental health impairments will get adopted before the 15 year old male teen with a history of ASD (no matter how mild) and ADHD.

As a bipolar I person, I'm on the bad cattle list too... Hard to put a positive spin on an Axis I mental illness diagnosis.

If that's the case then you can't really complain if an autistic guy lies on an application form and donates to a sperm bank. If all is fair in selecting your mate, then why isn't all fair in attempting to spread your genes. You are opening a bit of a pandora's box here.



You don't know that though, and the clients don't get an opportunity to choose because of an assumption on the part of the sperm bank that autism is negative. Since there is a shortage of willing donors and men who are fertile enough to donate in the U.K. at least, it could be argued that it's bad business to turn people away because of social stigmas.

Oh and this:

I'm not entirely surprised. The rules for sperm donation in most places are usually quite stringent, and you know what kind of donors they want? Healthy, tall, athletic, disability free, fair skin, nice hair... it's definitely eugenics, there's no doubt about it, but it's not really shocking to me. And you know, one of the reasons why I don't ever want to have kids is just because I don't want to be spreading my f****d up genes. I don't feel it's morally justifiable to bring someone into this world who will inevitably suffer through the same s**t I do.

Ohhhhh YES I can!

I'm a strong believer in informed consent.


True I don't know that. But they're still not obligated to sell it. You're telling me that you think a large number of women who really want a child (we can assume because they're paying a lot of money for it) would pick the option that yields a higher chance of having a child with a more difficult life? As a mother, that does not sound plausible me, at all. Most loving parents don't want their kids to struggle more than they have to.

ETA
I can get behind this idea to a point. I think we need to know what autism actually is first though.

I don't think the sperm bank is trying to alter anything, they're just selling what people already want.


While I do agree societal change would help, I don't think my kids would be better off in a completely autistic world though. My HFA husband finds our youngest son difficult to be around sometimes because he is so loud. My husband loves our son, but even then he struggles with him. And my HFA husband doesn't understand our non-communicative older son any better than I do. It's not like autistic people are compatible with all other autistic people.

I don't think there will be all autistic place to live and I have no desire to be in one. If I change my mind about this, that would mean the Autistic rights and Neurodiversity movements have completely failed and autistics find themselves in a similar position to Jews in Nazi Germany in the 1930's.

When I was growing up the expected outcome for LBGT people was similar to Autistic people now, but while far from perfect this has radically changed.

Even now in 2016 the expected outcome for black people is considerably less then for white people.

Yet this company felt it could not get away with saying blacks and LGBT people are not eligible to donate but did feel they could get away with it for autistics and the other conditions listed, this is telling. I do expect if they did say blacks were not eligible to donate they would not have nearly the amount of WP posters saying it is just business.

It must really suck to be an autist AND to be told by your mom that you are intrinsically inferior.

I wouldn't count on us being weeded out by anything short of an intentional extermination program. We're still here and we're the ones that have the genes in question, at the moment we're the ones with the most agency here. I think there are enough of us who realize that our peculiar way of looking at the world is intrinsically valuable and worth keeping around that, should our numbers start to dwindle, there could be something of a preservation movement.

I'm sure you are , but if you argue that all is fair when it comes to breeding, then why should it just work one way. If it's O.K. NT's are using sexual selection, then it's O.K. for autistic people to find a way around it.



A big factor in having a difficult life for autistic people is the attitude of society towards them. Black people tend to have more difficult lives than other ethnic groups, does this mean they should be barred from donating too?



That's a bit of a non-sequiter. No-one here is calling for a totally autistic world.



The problem is that a random recombination of genes could precipitate something that neither donor nor recipient has. It is unrealistic to expect to get 'perfect' child from a 'perfect' donor.



So why not campaign for a better world?



and it must suck even more to be an autist and internalise that feeling, as several obviously have on this thread.



We will grow old and die though, and if society attitudes don't change, then many autistics won't make it out of the womb alive. People with downs syndrome are already undergoing a intentional prenatal extermination program.



Even today, the autistic community is still very scattered and atomised. This will only get worse if numbers drastically dwindle, and with fewer autistics, society will care even less about accepting us.

I meant this hypothetically. The point being that if all of the problems associated with autism were caused by society, then making an all-autistic society would fix all the problems. But I don't think it would - because all the problems associated with autism are not caused by society.


True but there are still people who want to have kids with a black man.


I would still say it. If we lived in a society where nobody wanted to have kids with black people, I would object to society's values (as I do with autism too, to an extent), but i wouldn't expect them to keep sperm that nobody will buy. That wouldn't do any good. Currently, they label your ethnicity so the women know, which I strongly support because I think it would be awful if someone racist accidentally got a "biracial" baby. I do not think forcing people to have black babies if they don't want them, would help the situation. I think it would further marginalization of black people and be very bad for everyone.

XenoMind- If you think I'm a bad parent, you'd be horrified by some of the other parents of autistic kids. I'm often accused of being far too accepting of autism and not enough "warrior mommy"-like. Which is one reason why everyone should support informed consent. It benefits the kids.

It would be quite easy for me as a 6 foot 2 well built WASP who has no registered diagnosis to donate. (when I was younger)

If I chose to see my Aspergers as a Gift (20% of which I do, the rest is more challenging) or if I was amoral and just wanted the cash.

Then I (we) could donate sperm as a conscious act of subversion, then leak it out to the media thereby compromising the marketing of sperm stock as pure bred by potentially contaminating the product. Stocks in these companies would plummet. ha ha.

It doesn't. Self-pity and self-hatred won't help you at all.

Believe me, until recently I was right there. But then I learned to frame things not in terms of "normal" NT things that I might have difficulties with, but instead in terms of Aspie things I can do that NTs might struggle with. As a friend in a dream put it, I can choose to be a second-rate NT or a first-rate Aspie.

There are people that want autistic kids. They could be autistics or just those that believe the "Einstein" stereotype.

An all autistic society would be have plenty of problems due to lack of Neurodiversity and because like NT's autistics are people with flaws.

Besides bieng unethical in not informing clients about the choice they did not have this company is plain stupid. It was not just Autistic doners they refused but doners with a bunch of other conditions. How on earth did they think that thier policy could be kept secret?

I do not think anybody has favored forcing clients to take a baby they do not want. Objections have been the assumption the autistic "product" is defective, making this decision based on lack of reputable science.