CNN.com has an article I stumbled across today with the title "Who's your daddy? A celebrity look-alike". Essentially, all it is about is a sperm bank in LA that tries to describe what the sperm donor looks like by comparing them to a celebrity that they resemble the closest. I think this is actually a great idea!
From the article:
"The goal was not to say you can have a baby that looks like Bob Saget," Brown said. "The goal was to say this donor happens to resemble this celebrity."
This is something I have thought a lot about actually...you tend to think a lot about a lot of stuff like this when you are going through this :( The same type of thing is also true of egg donation places where you are sometimes shown a few select pictures of the egg donor, sometimes only a baby picture of the egg donor, and sometimes nothing at all. The entrepreneur side of my personality was thinking of a egg donor agency (or whatever the preferred word would be) where the couple or woman meets with some of the staff and given some family photos. THEN, using most likely a combination of computer modeling and human intuition, a donor is chosen out of the egg donor database that will most likely provide the DNA that will produce a child that most resembles the family doing the choosing. Make sense? As we have blogged about before it is extremely difficult emotionally and technically to make a decision of an egg donor. Also there is the "issue" of knowing what the donor looked like...looking back years later at your child (hopefully...if it worked) and thinking "my child looks just like the donor and nothing like me!" My idea could take that away b/c you wouldn't really know what the donor looks like at all and yet hopefully the child would "fit" in looks-wise into the broader family, i.e., brothers, sisters, parents, cousins, etc. Anyhoo....I'm getting sidetracked and giving away one of my many great ideas :)
So, at any rate, I think the celebrity sperm donor look-alike thing is a great idea. But....this is also a quote from the article:
Bonnie Steinbock, professor of philosophy who specializes in bioethics at the University at Albany in New York, said it magnifies the superficiality in society. "There's something strange about a culture that has stratified rigid types of beauty where everyone looks alike. Now they're trying to create children through who the [actor] of the moment is."
Oh, come on! Get a real profession you hack! Bioethics? Do some real work! :)
Ultimately though this sums it up nicely:
Bioethicists are divided over the program. Sperm banks routinely allow clients to search based on ethnic background, hair color, eye color and skin tone. They offer extensive details such as donors' height, weight and educational background.
"There are legitimate reasons for this, so the child fits in with the already existing children in the family or so the child looks more like the social father," said Mark Rothstein, director of the Institute for Bioethics, Health Policy and Law at the University of Louisville School of Medicine in Kentucky. "Most people would consider that to be acceptable. ... If you're creating a little Keanu Reeves, then I have problems with that."
Firstly, "social father'? That's a new one! How about father! Why is it so fucking hard to call a father a father and a sperm donor a sperm donor???
Secondly, "bioethicists are divided"? Oh good, I thought there were "real" problems with the program :)
Thirdly, I have a bit of a problem with "then I have problems with that" quote. Oh, you do? Well, luckily, it's none of your fucking business what motivates a person.
Whatever, I say it's a great idea. It's just too bad that cnn.com and people with little to no experience in these sorts of matters insist on having opinions. What is it they call these types of opportunities? Teachable moments? Perhaps this could have been used to discuss the complications, emotions, and heartaches of being faced with choosing a sperm or egg donor? Oh, nevermind, why start now with responsible reasonable journalism.
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