Sperm donors: there’s an app for that in London
by Michael Cook | 1 Oct 2016 |
Now you can order a daddy in London as easily as a pizza. The London Sperm Bank has released an iPhone app which allows women to browse through men and select their sperm based upon characteristics like ethnicity, occupation, personality type, and eye color. The cost is £950 (about US$1200) which can be paid through the app.
The app also lets women create a wish list so that they can customize their sperm donor. When the right sperm arrives, they will receive a notification. If it appeals to them, it will be couriered to the woman’s fertility service.
"You make all the transactions online, like you do anything else these days," said Dr Kamal Ahuja, scientific director of the London Sperm Bank. "This allows a woman who wants to get a sperm donor to gain control in the privacy of her own home and to choose and decide in her own time. We think this is the first of its kind in the world."
Early last month Dr Ahuja described the high quality of his product in BioNews. He stressed that it had been approved by the UK’s fertility watchdog, the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority: “Ordering sperm from an online catalogue or an app does not trivialise treatment … Donor recruitment according to the old model of advertising is unlikely to succeed, but by embracing new technologies we have shown that it can thrive and prosper.”
The news of the app was relayed in the media with the kind of ribald but quizzical treatment that most new artificial reproduction technologies receive. But there were critics. "How much further can we go in the trivialisation of parenthood? This is reproduction via the mobile phone," said Josephine Quintavalle, of the campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics. "It's digital dads. Choose daddy. This is the ultimate denigration of fatherhood."
Yes, the American president is the most powerful man in the world. Yes, he has the launch codes. But there is something unhealthy in the preoccupation of the world’s media with the US presidential campaign at the expense of other world crises.
Donald Trump, who must be the worst major party candidate ever, seems to have incited violence at some of his rallies and has even made vague threats to Hillary Clinton. If you Google “Trump violence”, you will get 82,700,000 results. It’s a live issue, at least in the media.
Google “Duterte violence” and you will get only 971,000 results – about 1% of the figures for Trump. But Mr Duterte has incited thugs, vigilantes and police to kill drug dealers and since he took office on June 30. The Filipino president now has the blood of 3,500 of his own countrymen on his hands. And he is not a buffoon running for President. He is the President.
But it could get worse. This week he cheerfully compared himself to Hitler. “Hitler massacred three million Jews ... there’s three million drug addicts. There are. I’d be happy to slaughter them,” he told a press conference. “You know my victims. I would like (them) to be all criminals to finish the problem of my country and save the next generation from perdition.”
The number of murders in July, August and September is more or less equivalent to the number of civilians killed in Syria. Why doesn’t the world care? It’s probably because Duterte’s victims are drug addicts and dealers. Even if they are, they have a right to life and a right to justice. They are human beings; they are not scum.
The world is demanding the removal of Syria’s President Assad because of the atrocities committed by his regime. It’s time that world leaders called for the removal of President Duterte.
Michael Cook
Editor
BioEdge
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