Can autistics be sperm donors?

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@kfisherx:

Do you think ASD is a mistake of the nature?

You said something about controlling the severity; do you think that we should knit our own "perfect" babies by the standard that we think we know, if we had the ability?

Do you think that you speak for all people with severe ASD when you mention pain and redused life quality?

Do you think it is better to erease ASD from earth?

People with autism can probably donate sperm here. As far as I can understand the legislation where I live, fertility clinics are obliged to select healthy donors whose sperm does not pose a risk, but it would be entirely their clinical judgement whether to include autistic spectrum disorders in their screening questionnaire - Donors must be selected on the basis of their age, health and medical history, provided on a questionnaire and through a personal interview performed by a qualified and trained healthcare professional. This assessment must include relevant factors that may assist in identifying and screening out persons whose donation could present a health risk to others, such as the possibility of transmitting diseases (such as sexually transmitted infections), or health risks to themselves (e.g; superovulation, sedation or the risks associated with the egg collection procedure or the psychological consequences of being a donor). It seems to be the same in much of Europe.

I think the recipient of donated sperm should have the opportunity to decline sperm from people with identifiable inherited conditions, just as the recipient would choose the partner that they have children with. I think that selection will inevitable mean that EVERY identifiable trait of any kind will be excluded, but I can not think of a less unfair alternative. If donor insemination ever became a significant proportion of all pregnancies, then eugenic selection would become a very serious risk to the health of the human population because it wipes out essential diversity and has no regard for pleiotropy.

Having children is one of the most magical and rewarding experiences of my life, and I would not take that choice away from anyone else.

well you can believe what you want, better to be honest than 'polite' i wholeheartedly disagree with the idea of trying to exclude autism from the gene pool though. for all my difficulties i'm still grateful for life. i probably won't donate, instead i would like to have children of my own the old-fashioned way and it seems highly likely to me i will pair with an aspie lady. i don't think you should ask people not to, by all means express your opinion that you think it's a bad idea but don't ask others to share in your fear and apparent disrespect for certain groups of people and their potential contribution to the world.
of course , you can ultimately say whatever you want, just in my opinion it's unfair and indecent to try to persuade others to believe something so negative.
no offence intended as such, i respect your honesty.
fudo

That is a very fair and sensible way of addressing this.

On a sillier note, if we ever found ourselves in a dystopian future where donor insemination was the standard, rather than women being inseminated naturally or even artificially by their spouse or lover, then that means most men have become infertile. Women tend to choose their own spouse or lover as a first resort. So if donors become the first resort, that means something awful happened to the sperm of most men. We wouldn't have the option of eugenics because there just wouldn't be enough sperm for there to be many choices. If there were only a handful of fathers in this future dystopia then genetic diversity would definately go out the window but not necessarily because of eugenics. Yes, I do read a lot of science fiction.

StuartN, the donor process here is similar to what you describe from what I can tell and it appears that ASD carriers are typically excluded from donating.

Fudo, thank you for your intelligent response with no personal insults. Disagreeing with someone is fine. I am not suggesting that we eliminate ASD from the gene pool entirely and that will never happen because people will always breed based on partner versus sperm donor. If you have the resources to raise a potentially severely affected autistic child, then go for it. Again it makes no sense for a sperm Donor since they will not be raising that child. Also I personally, cannot do that and could not live with myself if I purposely brought a human being into this world who had to suffer. There are way too many kids already on this planet in need of services and parenting and my thoughts are that I would adopt if I had to do it again but with my new knowledge. While I agree that having children is one of the most magical experiences of my life, I would not chose my own personal happiness over my child's personal well being.

For the rest of you, try your hardest to refrain from the personal insults. They add nothing to the conversation. I will try to answer your questions....

1. Is ASD a mistake of nature? There are aspects of ASD that are very, very bad. Those of us who are lucky enough to communicate on this board are NOT representative of the worst that autism has to offer. Even so, how many threads do we read on here every day from people suffering and wishing to die or wishing their life was different because of the damage ASD has done to them. I would like to get rid of the bad parts of ASD while keeping the good parts. Since we do not understand it well enough yet to do that, I support the research to that end.

2. You may not be able to "knit" your own perfect babies in this world, BUT you can slant the odds in your favor or not. Choosing to breed when you know that you are a carrier to a disorder that causes all the harm that I see when I dig into this ASD thing (beyond this board), is not something I call "good odds" for parenting a child. Again, if you have the resources to do it and your own personal feelings are that these kids are not really suffering more than you need to have kids then have at it. Not for me though...

3. My daughter with ASD is not reproducing by her own decision. I am fine with that choice.

4. Do I speak for all severely affected ASD when I say that their life has pain? I cannot say as I do not know ALL the affected ASD people in the world and many of them are incapable of expressing anything that I can understand. I have to ask the question back to you. Who is speaking for these people? Do you believe that none of them suffer? Do you believe everything about autism should be preserved and that we should purposely create people who are disabled? You see... This topic is not that black and white so it will be hard for many to actually have a conversation about it.

5. My final question to those who are so opposed to the fact that I do not believe people with ASD should be sperm donors. Would you actually chose a sperm donor who was a carrier to Bi-polar? How about Parkinsons? OCD? I mean really? By answering that you would not purposefully chose this, do you also negate all the people today who are suffering from these disorders? Do you insult everyone who has these disorders?

There is a risk in every life. ASD or not. NTs too can end up having a life they don't want to live.

People with an ASD can also get children who are NT, or ASD children who do not have lots of suffering. There is no guarantee either that it will turn out in a "bad" way, or that there won't be any kind of help for the suffering.

Sometimes I feel like we try to control everything in coming children's lives. If there is the slightest risk that something could go bad, then we shouldn't have children. But there is no guarantee, neither for suffering nor for the opposite. You can't read the future.

You might as well say, what if a kid that would bring a lot of good into the world (maybe even stop sufferings of others!) were not born?

(Yes, I am going to make assertions here that are completely without factual proof for the purpose of getting a point across)

A world without Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Alfred Hitchcock, Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison and Mark Twain would be a very different world indeed. Quite likely a darker, older, less humorous one. I prefer the world in which these people did exist, and believe that every individual with ASD, regardless of their severity, has something to offer the world. Two NTs with no genetic pre-disposition to anything can create serial killers, dictators and genocidal fascist maniacs. We all take the good with the bad and cannot allow possibility of the bad to prevent us from moving forward as a species.

Yes, I disagree with kfisherx and her point of view, but I do defend her right to express it and I do expect others to refrain from personal attacks because of it.

Thank you

@ kfisherx

I dont feel personal attacked, Im curious. And I pose essential questions, because I bet you had difficulties answering them.

Suppose we control the genepool one day, and ASD would be sorted out, I think it would restrict the mental capabilities of man kind. This is something else than Parkinson etc. Of course you have to focus on the bad parts of AS to support your statement, but I probably dont even have to ask: "what about the good things?" And what about the bad/good things of everything else? It is also likely that people with ASD who are happy with their lives, never find out that they have ASD, and that those who are unhappy find their ways to this web page.

I believe my opinion doesnt count on this, but I do believe that my own genes should be preserved. As to donate sperm if you have ASD, I dont see why it should be bad, but the whole donating thing is out of my league anyways. I just react because somebody has such a strong meaning against it.

this pretty much sums up my feelings exactly, and i wanted to say more than i had but am currently too lazy to type lol
so thankyou MidlifeAspie, well said.

However, you are negating the value of statistics with this view.

There are risks for everyone, but for most people those risks are unknown or comparable to the average.

A person with AS has a significantly higher chance of having a disabled child. That is FACT.

There is always risk in life and to attempt to avoid it altogether is irrational, however it is perfectly reasonable for people to change their behavior as the chance of bad things happening increases.

For Example:

Would you get into an aircraft if it had a:

1 in 11 million chance of crashing (actual statistic)?

how about a 1 in 1000 chance of crashing?

how about a 1 in 100 chance of crashing?

how about a 1 in 2 chance of crashing?

Of course and my point is simply WHY would you increase the risk if you did not have to? That is all... It is very simple logic without emotion. If you knew you carried a potentially harmful gene what is the point of taking that risk if there are other options? Is your need to procreate really more important than the quality of life risks? In my case, it is not. That is all I am saying.

No
No
No
No

(Hate flying)

Thank you for disagreeing while allowing others their opinions. Makes for a much nicer debate.. Of course your assumption is invalid since we do not know if any of these people actually had ASD. I work with a bunch of people just like the above mentioned ones and would swear they has ASD but when I got them to take the ASQ, they all scored in the low teens. I don't think that every smart person has ASD and that high IQ often looks like ASD but isn't. That is confusing to me so I cannot agree that all the scientist and brilliant people in the world are ASD.

Second is that I am not for the complete removal of ASD good traits. I am only advocating that we figure out how to parse the traits and remove those the plague us. Since I am deep into science in my career, I do not have to see this as a black/white thing. There are more colorful ways of reaching a compromise that neither completely eliminates ASD nor tolerates the harm that it does to the human race. I too, want to keep the traits that make this world a better place. Can we do that? I think it is possible...

Thanks to you too for your mature response.... Again I am for parsing the traits. (see above) And NO problems answering your questions at all since they made sense to me. Since parsing isn't possible today I think it prudent that we make the desicion to breed or not with eyes WIDE-OPEN. Given the facts and statistics I would choose NO to breeding. I am not convinced that ASD is a signle contributing factor to our mental capabilities. People with High IQ can focus for long periods of time as well.

BTW: I was very happy with my life and accidently found out I had ASD through grief therapy and yet I am on this page.

Last edited by kfisherx on 09 Feb 2011, 2:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, I prefaced my post with that. But I think we can both agree that people with ASD have contributed great things to society, even if we can't point to exactly who the person was with any real factual evidence.

Oh heck yeah! I would like to think that I am one of those people. LOL!

That said, the question we really have to ask is could these people do just as well without ASD affecting them? I am who I am because of my ASD as much as despite my ASD but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to eliminate the bad things.

Look at the post by pmhoff at the top of page 3 RE my character. It is ironic because all the "faults" this person sees in me are classic Autism/Aspergers. I missed the "humor" because I took the OP literally. I posted a terse statement because I lack ToM and figured that everyone knew what I knew and felt similar... etc.... Just about every single Point they make touches on my Aspergers. I get in trouble ALL THE TIME for these crappy ASD traits. I would gladly give them up and save myself the assults on my character. Anyone wanna teach me?