CatoCooper13
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Baby born with internet sperm
A British woman has given birth to the world's first baby conceived using sperm bought over the internet, sparking an ethical row.
The healthy boy, who weighed 5.5kg, was born to a heterosexual couple from England's south-east who turned to the ManNotIncluded.com website when in-vitro fertilisation failed.
MNI founder John Gonzalez said it was the first baby in the world to be conceived from sperm selected on the net, with a second due within weeks to a lesbian couple and 12 further lesbians and four single heterosexual women pregnant.
"Here's to the birth of countless more MNI babies over the coming weeks and months," Gonzalez said.
Pro-life groups and medical ethicists were horrified by the news, labelling it grubby, appalling and dangerous.
The Medical Ethics Alliance warned that sperm bought over the web could be of dubious quality and called it a gross abuse of fertility care.
"This should be brought under regulation and we think the practice of procuring a child over a website should be banned without delay," a spokesman said.
Patrick Cusworth, research officer with pro-life charity Life, said it was a grubby little process more suited to farmyard animals.
"If our society is to maintain any form of complete parental love and respect for its children then they must be welcomed unconditionally, and not created merely to live up to the social or medical criteria of others," Mr Cusworth said.
Pressure group Family and Youth Concern said it was a scary precedent.
"You should not be able to order children off the internet as if they are just goods," director Robert Whelan said.
"It is a form of eugenics and it is frankly terrifying."
An Australian businessman is trying to set up a similar scheme in Europe but has been stymied by contractual problems, including a landlord refusing to let office space to the business and a courier firm pulling out of an agreement to deliver the semen.
The MNI website has been heavily criticised since it was launched a year ago.
But it has attracted more than 5,500 anonymous male donors - paid between STG50 and STG100 a pop - and 3,000 potential clients, who pay STG1,200 for fresh samples of their selected donor's sperm to be delivered to their home for self-insemination.
Under a loophole excluding fresh sperm from government scrutiny, the site is not monitored by the fertility watchdog, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.
That means MNI does not have to quarantine its sperm for 180 days, as licensed clinics do, to screen it for infections such as HIV, which has an incubation period of up to three months.
"The HFEA cannot guarantee good laboratory practices and safe testing of donated sperm from unlicensed donation services," chairwoman Suzi Leather said.
©AAP 2003
A British woman has given birth to the world's first baby conceived using sperm bought over the internet, sparking an ethical row.
The healthy boy, who weighed 5.5kg, was born to a heterosexual couple from England's south-east who turned to the ManNotIncluded.com website when in-vitro fertilisation failed.
MNI founder John Gonzalez said it was the first baby in the world to be conceived from sperm selected on the net, with a second due within weeks to a lesbian couple and 12 further lesbians and four single heterosexual women pregnant.
"Here's to the birth of countless more MNI babies over the coming weeks and months," Gonzalez said.
Pro-life groups and medical ethicists were horrified by the news, labelling it grubby, appalling and dangerous.
The Medical Ethics Alliance warned that sperm bought over the web could be of dubious quality and called it a gross abuse of fertility care.
"This should be brought under regulation and we think the practice of procuring a child over a website should be banned without delay," a spokesman said.
Patrick Cusworth, research officer with pro-life charity Life, said it was a grubby little process more suited to farmyard animals.
"If our society is to maintain any form of complete parental love and respect for its children then they must be welcomed unconditionally, and not created merely to live up to the social or medical criteria of others," Mr Cusworth said.
Pressure group Family and Youth Concern said it was a scary precedent.
"You should not be able to order children off the internet as if they are just goods," director Robert Whelan said.
"It is a form of eugenics and it is frankly terrifying."
An Australian businessman is trying to set up a similar scheme in Europe but has been stymied by contractual problems, including a landlord refusing to let office space to the business and a courier firm pulling out of an agreement to deliver the semen.
The MNI website has been heavily criticised since it was launched a year ago.
But it has attracted more than 5,500 anonymous male donors - paid between STG50 and STG100 a pop - and 3,000 potential clients, who pay STG1,200 for fresh samples of their selected donor's sperm to be delivered to their home for self-insemination.
Under a loophole excluding fresh sperm from government scrutiny, the site is not monitored by the fertility watchdog, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.
That means MNI does not have to quarantine its sperm for 180 days, as licensed clinics do, to screen it for infections such as HIV, which has an incubation period of up to three months.
"The HFEA cannot guarantee good laboratory practices and safe testing of donated sperm from unlicensed donation services," chairwoman Suzi Leather said.
©AAP 2003
Vampy hahaha 
im not sure if its really a wise idea to do uhmm
Was confused for a second there! 
