With Fertility Needs in Flux, Men Eye Freezing Their Sperm (wsj.com) 113
A crop of companies want to make sperm-freezing a routine procedure for young men, as employers start to offer it as a benefit. From a report: For decades, the conversation about waning fertility has been focused largely on women. Think of Marisa Tomei stomping on the floorboards of a front porch to emulate her biological clock ticking in "My Cousin Vinny." More employers cover the cost of cryogenic egg freezing as a workplace benefit. Recently, a small group of biotech startups have hatched, dedicated to what they say is an underserved market: male fertility. Armed with recent scientific research suggesting that the quality of sperm is declining in the West, the companies are trying to make sperm-freezing a routine procedure for young, healthy men, one covered by health insurance and free of stigma.
"My fundamental belief is that if the product is affordable, this should be a no-brainer for every man," says Khaled Kteily, the 32-year-old founder of Legacy, one of the companies that Mr. Alam used to freeze his sperm. "I believe that in the future," he adds, "this will be something that parents will buy for their kids as a not-so-subtle gift." The push to make a case for its business is starting to catch on. The company recently struck a deal to eventually provide free sperm testing and storage to all active duty service members in the U.S. military, starting with the Navy SEALs, of which there are about 1,200 a year, and expanding next to all special operations forces. The Navy didn't respond to a request for comment. Soldiers regularly experience risky situations and time away from their partners, says Ellen Gustafson, a Navy wife and co-founder of the Military Family Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for coverage of fertility medicine for members of the armed forces.
"My fundamental belief is that if the product is affordable, this should be a no-brainer for every man," says Khaled Kteily, the 32-year-old founder of Legacy, one of the companies that Mr. Alam used to freeze his sperm. "I believe that in the future," he adds, "this will be something that parents will buy for their kids as a not-so-subtle gift." The push to make a case for its business is starting to catch on. The company recently struck a deal to eventually provide free sperm testing and storage to all active duty service members in the U.S. military, starting with the Navy SEALs, of which there are about 1,200 a year, and expanding next to all special operations forces. The Navy didn't respond to a request for comment. Soldiers regularly experience risky situations and time away from their partners, says Ellen Gustafson, a Navy wife and co-founder of the Military Family Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for coverage of fertility medicine for members of the armed forces.
Do employers own your offspring? DNA? sex life? (Score:2)
Do employers own your offspring? DNA? sex life?
HIPPA issues?
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Oh boy, with certain Americans it's like the dystopic novel of a fascist dictatorship emerging from capitalism just writes itself...
Stop giving Americans a bad rep, please.
Don't even think such things! Why would you even go there? Never heard of self-fulfilling prophecies?
If you think it, at least state something that you would *like* to happen. To influence the general views and expectations of society for the better, instead of for the worse.
It's how change actually starts: In your head.
And this is what y
Re: Do employers own your offspring? DNA? sex life (Score:4, Insightful)
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Do employers own your offspring? DNA? sex life?
Would you like to explain why you think any of these things might be true? I can't think of anything reasonable that would make a non-paranoid person think these things are true.
HIPPA issues?
Are you just spouting "But HIPAA!!!" because it's an article that involves medicine? There's nothing special here that would bring up any HIPAA issues beyond the routine requirements for medical records.
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For someone who's not from the US,
and
sounds really fucking dystopian, right along the lines of what the OP was talking about. Then you realize that it's not employers *specifically* collecting eggs and sperm from their employees, but rather something that's covered by the general health insurance they ge
Re:Do employers own your offspring? DNA? sex life? (Score:5, Insightful)
There really shouldn't be any HIPPA issues, but HIPPA is so widely misunderstood that that misunderstanding creates issues where law itself does not.
HIPPA privacy rules don't restrict *you* or anyone you authorize from accessing your health care data held by a covered entity. Nor does it prevent those entities from sharing information when it's clearly needed for your care. It just prevents them from trafficking in your information for their *own* benefit without your permission.
Organizations use HIPPA as an excuse to stonewall questions they don't want to answer or to drag their feet on things they don't want to do. They make it out to be this thing you couldn't possibly understand. That's bullshit, and what you need to cut through that bullshit is a primary care physician. "We can't tell you but you couldn't possibly understand why" isn't going to cut it with a doctor.
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but HIPPA is so widely misunderstood
HIPAA
and will they try to make super soldiers? (Score:2)
and will they try to make super soldiers?
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Not from your genes, anyway. XD
Fresh tastes better (Score:1)
Fresh tastes better, according to 97% of Corporate cock suckers.
Re: Fresh tastes better (Score:2)
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YHBT. YHL. HAND. :)
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Just to be clear, the parent post was written by rsillvergun (with two l's) not by rsilvergun (just one l). This appears to be a sad attempt to indirectly troll rsilvergun by hoping that people are too distracted to notice the extra letter.
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It's easier to look at the user ID, which with the troll is seven digits long starting with an 8. The real has a (IIRC) six digit ID. Pretty pitiful excuse for a troll though.
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You are right, the user ID definitely stands out.
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The earliest electronic computers were created for the war effort through direct military funding and through university research. Eventually several people, including hobbyists, got the bright idea of taking a relatively cheap microcontroller and made home computers out of them.
That's great and all... (Score:1)
Until they have a breach which results in a leak*. What kind of "theft protection" for victims will they offer then??
(* oh yeah, pun totally intended here. Enjoy.)
Great (Score:3)
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And which not all insurers will cover birth control, which is much more important than fertility treatments.
Meanwhile all those rabidly protesting against abortion don't see very eager to adopt either or to pay for mothers to carry the fetuses to term. The same ones rabid against having morning-after pills which absolutely positively are in no way "abortion". Most of this anger is because they think women are just being sluts if they have an unwanted pregnancy, and and morning after pills and abortions ju
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Yup. The planet is over populated, and we have a lot of unwanted babies. But no, don't adopt, let's be selfish and only assume that our own genetic offspring are the real thing. I don't get it. If the nuts get blown off while you're serving in the military, then adopt. Or foster. Or whatever until you get over the urge to have a mini-me.
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we have a lot of unwanted babies. But no, don't adopt, let's be selfish
This is nonsense. There are far more people wanting to adopt than there are babies available.
Only 10% of hopeful parents [adoption.org] are able to adopt a baby.
Methamphetamine. (Score:3)
Methamphetamine seems to improve fertility, at least where I live. I don't see where we have a problem with fertility rates.
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Amusingly invermectin seems to cause sterility in about 85% of men, according to pre-COVID studies of its legitimate use in humans. Darwin is laughing at the MAGAts now, especially since those folks aren't bright enough to store sperm beforehand.
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.
no pun?
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False, that meme spreading around the internet is due to one shoddy and questionable study that cited one of even lower quality
https://www.iflscience.com/hea... [iflscience.com]
It's bullshit. No lasting fertility issues in either humans or cattle from use of this drug
https://www.researchgate.net/p... [researchgate.net]
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Of course getting vaccinated might be a better option. I got vaccinated now my 5G signal is awesome, and I never lose my keys, because they are magnetically stuck to my ass.
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We'll get rednecks to take it for birth control, now that'll be funny.
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One shoddy and questionable study is still infinitely more than the number of studies showing that the vaccine causes infertility in men. (yup, that belief is a thing too)
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False, that meme spreading around the internet is due to one shoddy and questionable study that cited one of even lower quality
So basically the level of evidence that it will make you sterile is about the same as the level of evidence that it is an effective treatment for COVID.
People who make decisions based on shoddy science should still be concerned.
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You really are a pitiful little weasel. I'll argue with Radiant, but just feel sorry for you.
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Just to be clear, the parent post was written by rsillvergun (with two l's) not by rsilvergun (just one l). The account appears to have first posted yesterday. This appears to be a sad attempt to indirectly troll rsilvergun by hoping that people are too distracted to notice the one extra letter.
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There's been a bunch of those lately, with different spellings.
It seems entirely inexplicable to me; he's quite capable of accidentally trolling himself with his real comments. Why bother?
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Slightly modified version of the same response actually. Slashdot does notice that. I suppose I did it for the same reason that I frequently take the spam calls I get and try to drag out the conversations with the human scammers as long as possible. I suppose I just don't like dirty tricks. If I did reply a large number of times, it's only because that account posted a large number of times. Also, as many people noticed that it was not the real rsilvergun, there probably were those who did not, so maybe it
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This kind of thing is to address the other side of the Idiocracy conundrum. The idiots still breed, but this allows the smart people who delay reproduction to still reproduce.
Personally, I think this whole thing is ridiculous and we should all just settle down into families in our 20s like our grandparents did. Recognize that work is not the end all be all thing that society seems to be pushing on us, and go back to single breadwinner families.
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There's fear in some quarters that idiots breed more. But more than that - fear that people who aren't European Christian caucasions are breeding more than us...
401k Employer Benefits? (Score:2)
Waning fertility is a good thing! Don't ruin it! (Score:1)
It's just nature trying to naturally limit human overpopulation before it destroys us all.
And of course the obvious result of us coming in contact with more and more artificial crap since the industrialization, while at the same time medicine has "improved" by keeping more and more genetic lineages alive that would never survive on their own. (I mean if you are literally infertile... mayyybe nature is trying to tell you something... and you should pay attention, instead of going into denial and carrying on.
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This is why people in poorer countries have so many children.
Gods, I hate this meme, originally propagated by eugenicists and now it's become the"conventional wisdom". People in poorer countries have more children because:
1) Lack of access to family planning. Once fertility controls are available to the poor they have fewer children.
2) Religion. Once Christian/Islamic/Hindu/whatever religious authorities lose control of a culture the poor have fewer children.
3) Poverty. Sex is pleasurable, and they don't have money for other entertainments. Once a culture become
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Maltusian ideas like this have been proven wrong again and again.
The thing they don't count on is that as the population increase, so does the minds thinking on solutions to solve the problems.
Darwin (Score:2)
Shooting blanks? (Score:2)
Are you shooting blanks? Well, I'm potent and I'll be happy to sell you some jizz. Better hurry, I have a vasectomy scheduled.
Just store your FASTA file (Score:3)
Why freeze sperm? Just store your DNA code in a FASTA file on your computer or in the cloud. When time to replicate, just synthesize your DNA sequence (good parts only, please) and initiate in-vitro gametogenesis process. Freezing sperm is so primitive.
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When I heard "freezing their sperm", my first thought was "I guess everyone has their kinks."
Good trend! (Score:5, Informative)
It is well known that with affluence people tend to have lesser children and often wait until later in life. Women it's obvious, as biologically their fertility has some pretty clear limitations and women's fertility has been studied for centuries. It's also known that their best eggs are usually earlier in life; a woman who gets pregnant much later in life will likely have the lesser quality eggs left. So by the company supporting them to do freezing, it allows women to make career moves earlier in their career which can set them up for better career success down the road and not sacrifice their children to do so. And no, to all the stupid comments here, the company doesn't own it, it's simply an extension of medical benefits.
Male fertility is much less studied, but there are studies coming out that things like heart defects, lower IQ and other congential defects show up much more commonly in children where the father is older. Women are born with the eggs they will have, but men replace sperm all the time. As we age, our genes get less effective at reproducing; errors are more likely to occur. That's also true of the sperm, and directly relates to congential diseases. So I think this is a good thing; allowing people to be career oriented yet also maintain the best years of their fertility.
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Boy the comments on this one are absurd. This is actually a legitimate issue.
This is Slashdot. WTF did you expect??
It is well known that with affluence people tend to have lesser children [....] It's also known that their best eggs are usually earlier in life ...
[Citations needed]
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It is well known that with affluence people tend to have lesser children [....] It's also known that their best eggs are usually earlier in life ...
[Citations needed]
I saw it in a movie once. I thought it was a comedy at the time, but now I realize it was a documentary.
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Freudian slip maybe? I life in an affluent neighborhood and know many families and their children, and "lesser" is certainly more appropriate than fewer.
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If you put career before children, you should not have children. It doesn't matter if you've got a penis or a vagina. The world keeps turning without your offspring. You may (!) be able to use artificial insemination to reduce the biological burden from late conception, but frozen eggs and sperm pose their own defect risk, and even if everything works to plan, you have children "without parents", because their biological parents could easily be their grandparents, age gap and all. Freezing eggs and sperm "f
Nope. (Score:3, Insightful)
Providing for the needs of one's children is a lot easier if one has money. And in order to attain a steady supply thereof, one must establish one's self in one's career. That takes a few years, and during those years one needs to be able to focus in order to get the experience and promotions.
Having children when one is too financially unstable to provide for them is the greater evil.
Dumber or Weaker? (Score:2)
lesser children
Maybe you meant "fewer."
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I saw that too - was going to reply the same way, but someone else had already replied. [slashdot.org] And then I wondered if it actually was a typo or not...
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The needs of the child (let's not kid ourselves, we're talking about one child, not children) are first and foremost loving and caring parents, unless you want to raise a materialistic psychopath, but I guess parents do want their offspring to be in their own image, so that's a possibility too. Let's not give people the idea that they can't have kids until they've "established themselves in a career". That's the path towards Idiocracy.
IMHO all this freezing bullshit is a way of making people dedicate themse
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You cannot meet the needs of the child if you are poor! Or at least, not nearly as well. And it's not just about materialism, its about affording food, medicine, high quality education, a safe living environment, and so on. "Rushing" to have children before you are wealthy enough to afford these things IS failing to provide adequately for those children.
I agree that our society is doomed. But encouraging people to have kids they can't afford to raise is not going to save us.
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I may be hopelessly naive, but I don't think it is a binary choice between "freeze the sperm and eggs and skip the child, let's go directly to making a grandchild" on one hand and raising a kid in abject poverty on the other hand.
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This is all on the assumption the having children is a personal choice and the burden should be carried by the parents.
In fact that isn't the case anywhere in the developed world, e.g. schooling is provided by the state for free.
Some countries have already found that low birth rate is causing problems, and started trying to encourage people to have children.
Freezing sperm and eggs is not really solving the problem.
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Plus with longer lifespans means we have much more time tha
Re: Good trend! (Score:1)
Re: Good trend! (Score:2)
Can a woman who's menopausal (or even post-menopausal) become impregnated via harvested eggs & IVF and carry a healthy baby to term?
Ie, does "menopause" just mean she's out of egg cells and no longer having periods, or does a woman's entire reproductive system permanently self-destruct during menopause?
Could doctors conceivably use hormones to artificially induce a period (or several) to "reboot" and "re-prime" a 60 year old woman's uterus, implant a fertilized egg that was harvested in her 20s, and use
Re: Good trend! (Score:2)
Well, it turns out, law & policy seem to be bigger barriers than technology.
According to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov] ... a 57 year old Italian woman & her 70+ year old husband went abroad (IVF at her age would have been literally against the law in Italy), and she was impregnated via IVF & carried the baby to term. An Italian court subsequently declared them to be unfit parents due to their age and took the child away from them.
The oldest American woman to date was 53 (she falsified docume
Working with Navy SEALs? (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm all for saving the seals. ;)
Donâ(TM)t do it (Score:1)
My wife and I had kids too late. Donâ(TM)t make the same mistake.
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Just to be clear, the parent post was written by rsillvergun (with two l's) not by rsilvergun (just one l). The account appears to have first posted yesterday. This appears to be a sad attempt to indirectly troll rsilvergun by hoping that people are too distracted to notice the extra letter.
Why health insurance? (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand, why people may be interested in doing this — but why must it be covered by the "health insurance"? What's the sickness to treat here?
Food is even more important to health — must insurance be covering your groceries? And — in cases of emergency — restaurant visits too?
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What's the sickness to treat here?
The most troubling sickness of all - the primary symptom of which is a startup’s founders not having a billion dollars in their bank account.
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Not being able to conceive is, actually, an illness...
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Some of those same employers refuse to cover birth control in their health care packages. About as big a double standard as the health plans that cover Viagra but not birth control pills.
Pregnancy is not a disease (Score:2)
It is not a double standard, it is perfectly sensible: impotence is an illness — which is why the likes of Viagra are covered to treat it. Pregnancy is not an illness — on the contrary! — there is nothing to "treat", which is why birth control is not covered.
Glad, I was able to help you out in your confusion..
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My view is that if insurers refuse to cover birth control, a vital necesity, that they should not do the same for fertility treatments either.
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Conception is not a symptom of any sickness. Indeed, it is a manifestation of some health! This is why health insurance must not cover anything subverting it.
Infertility is an illness, which is why insurers may cover it — and many do.
But the topic is not infertility — it is the freezing of sperm (or eggs) "just in case"... It may be prudent of people to prepare for potential future infertility by doing so, but that's no reason f
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Conception is not a symptom of any sickness. Indeed, it is a manifestation of some health!
Then don't call it "health insurance", call it "doctor insurance", because you have to visit a doctor to get most birth control. Also most preventative care is covered under health insurance, therefore birth control which is preventative care should be also.
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Birth control is not "preventative care", because — as I already pointed out — pregnancy is not a disease!
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Because in the US healthcare is a commercial product, and there is a market for freezing sperm.
If healthcare was socialized you might have a good argument, but here it's just a question of what people are willing to pay for.
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There is a market for orange juice too, must it be covered by health insurance?
Unfortunately, health insurance is already much socialized in the US too. If these "people" you are talking about simply wanted to pay for freezing sperm, they'd pay for freezing sperm. No, they want other people to help them pay for it — via increased insurance p
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So, others are discovering my latest kink? (Score:2)
I didn't think fucking the freezer would catch on, but quarantine can do strange things to people's desires.
Slashvertisment (Score:2)
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You may not know this, but the Wall Street Journal is a real newspaper. Slashdot is linking to them in a list of current news articles. Payments would not create deception.
As for the WSJ article, the subheadline starts, "A crop of companies want to make ..." so it is clearly not an advertisement for one of them.
Rules only cover the exact thing the rule covers. Rules don't broadly cover whatever sounds similar to a random person.
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Employee benefit? (Score:2)
You don't need to go home and conceive your next child. You just stay at your desk and work that overtime. We'll take care of that other thing for you.
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gigolos to service the wives of their star programmers?
Why do you think so many wives are pushing to have offices reopened and husbands to go back to the office after the pandemic?
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Frankly, I've never really seen free workplace fruit as a significant incentive.
I'm not likely to join a company based on the availability of free frozen sperm. It's not as if you can't bring a flask.
In what way shape or form... (Score:2)
Can this be considered "affordable"?
just an analysis is $200, 5 year storage is a grand. 5 years $4k
"My fundamental belief is that if the product is affordable, this should be a no-brainer for every man," says Khaled Kteily, the 32-year-old founder of Legacy, one of the companies that Mr. Alam used to freeze his sperm.
And then we encounter the issue of "privilege"
sigh
This is important... (Score:1)
Why is this on slashdot? (Score:2)
No one here will get close to a woman's eggs.
Controling paternity (Score:2)
Once semen leaves a your body it is out of your control what happens with it. Since paternity fraud is real is a man liable for a child that is produced with his semen without his consent?
oh yeahh.... you GOTTA freeze your sperm.... (Score:1)
i got mine right next to the cornettos.