| Industry | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1980; 46 years ago (1980) |
| Founder | Robert Klark Graham |
| Defunct | 1999 (1999) |
| Headquarters | , United States |
TheRepository for Germinal Choice (originally named theHermann J. Muller Repository for Germinal Choice, afterNobel laureateHermann Joseph Muller) was asperm bank that operated inEscondido, California from 1980 to 1999. The repository is commonly believed to have accepted only donations from recipients of theNobel Prize, although in fact it accepted donations from non-Nobelists, also.[1] The first baby conceived from the project was a girl born on April 19, 1982. Founded byRobert Klark Graham, the repository was dubbed the "Nobel prize sperm bank" by media reports at the time.[2] The only contributor who became known publicly wasWilliam Shockley, Nobel laureate in physics and eugenicist.
Robert Graham managed the bank until his death in February 1997 and the responsibilities were passed to Floyd Kimble, a businessman fromOhio who had shown interest in the bank. At the time of Graham's death, the bank claimed to have produced 217 children, none of whom from sperm donated from Graham's initial focus, Nobel Prize winners.[3][4] When Kimble died in 1998 the combined relatives of both men decided to close down the bank. All sperm samples were destroyed; it remains unclear what happened to the Repository's records.[1]
Although most news articles of the time made much of the Repository's "Nobel sperm" standards, in fact the Repository is only known to have stocked the sperm of one Nobelist, William Shockley. Other donors were recruited from among the ranks of scientists and academics Graham and his assistant, Paul Smith, considered to be "the future Nobel laureates".[1]
Graham's initial attempts to recruit Nobel laureates who lived near the Repository yielded only three volunteers, Shockley among them; however, when the news media began reporting on the existence and intentions of the Repository, two of the laureates broke off their ties to Graham and did not donate. Only Shockley remained, and even he donated only once. Paul Smith was charged with recruiting new donors, and he traveled throughout California, focusing mainly on college campuses, in search of volunteers. Smith later estimated his "hit rate" of donors signed up compared to men he invited to be "six or eight, maybe ten" out of one hundred. The search was expanded to country-wide, and eventually more donors were recruited, although none of them were – then or currently – Nobel laureates. At the time of his death, Graham had expanded his requirements to allow athletes, artists, and businessmen as donors.[1]
One donor named Jason Kaiser, known as Orange Red at the repository, was featured in the 2003 documentary along with Paul Kisak. The documentary was entitledGenius Sperm Bank, which theDiscovery Channel broadcast in 2004. The documentary briefly touched upon Kaiser's viewpoints at the time, and reunited him with three of the nine children that reputedly had resulted from his donations. Although not a Nobel laureate, Kaiser did achieve aMaster of Science degree incytogenetics and Kisak was inMensa,Intertel,the CIA and had anMBA and multipleEngineering degrees.
As with the repository's criteria to accept sperm donors, its criteria for women to receive sperm from the bank were not as high as initially reported. Rumors that women were required to be members ofMensa were false; in fact, women did not need to meet any particular intellectual requirement. Essentially, any woman who was married, in good health, and not homosexual was accepted; the only women reported to have been refused sperm were "one [woman] who tooklithium, [and] another who was obese and diabetic."[1]
Graham's original intention was to monitor the outcomes of children produced through the bank's sperm, and he asked families using the bank's sperm to agree to periodic surveys; however, most recipients showed no interest in sharing information on their children once the procedure was over, and when he sent out a survey to recipient families in the early 1990s, few families responded. Two women who claimed to have been the recipients of repository sperm and to have raised children born of that sperm responded anonymously to a series of articles inSlate in 2001. Both stated that their children were extremely intelligent and healthy.[3]
A later segment of the sameSlate article reported on the highlights of the lives of fifteen of the resultant children. Of the fifteen, six reportedly had 4.0GPAs and two were reported to be "artistically precocious". One child was reported by his parents as a "math-science genius" and another as a "musical whiz". All the children contacted bySlate were in good health, except one, who had what his mother described as a "developmental disability".[5]
JournalistDavid Plotz wrote several articles on the repository for the online magazine,Slate. Plotz would later write a book about his experiences investigating the repository in the bookThe Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank (2005). Moreover, a documentary, which aired onBBC Horizon in 2006, went over the history of the Repository and various statements made by Graham. The program also featured discussion from another donor, University of Central Oklahoma biology professorJames Bidlack.[6]
The Big Bang Theory'spilot episode satirizes the repository whenLeonard andSheldon visit the "high-IQ sperm bank," intending to donate specimens, only to leave after Sheldon suffers a moral crisis over committing "genetic fraud" by donating sperm that may not produce the promised genius offspring.[7]
Episode 5 ofThis is Life with Lisa Ling focused on the sperm bank, interviewing people who donated, people who went to the sperm bank seeking donated sperm, and people who were born as a result.[8]
The German novelFast genial ("Almost Genius") byBenedict Wells tells the story of a fictitious child produced by the sperm bank, who searches for his biological father.
Quickly dubbed the Nobel sperm bank, Graham's project . . . .
9. Singareddy, Nikita "The Nobel Prize Sperm
Bank"[1]
https://waitingroom.substack.com/p/the-nobel-prize-sperm-bank
24 June 2020
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