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DanArmak comments on Some thoughts on having children - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: pianoforte611 08 January 2014 05:26PM

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Comment author: DanArmak 08 January 2014 09:47:33PM 1 point [-]

Sperm banks are a market, so why wouldn't / aren't there banks providing more expensive sperm that they guarantee to be higher quality? It's something I really expected to exist; why doesn't it (if it doesn't)?

Comment author: Lumifer 08 January 2014 09:57:40PM 3 points [-]

why wouldn't / aren't there banks providing more expensive sperm that they guarantee to be higher quality?

Because they can't. For most reasonable definitions of "higher quality" there is no current technology which will allow you to take a look at sperm (and, say, sequence the DNA) and provide assurances about characteristics of the future person.

Now, their marketing materials, of course, are a different issue :-/

Comment author: DanArmak 09 January 2014 06:42:19PM 0 points [-]

I didn't mean to imply they could measure these traits in the sperm itself; they can measure them in the donor instead. All we need is to know that these variables are heritable: IQ, height, race / skin color, emotional and personality profile, health history, family health history, specific mutations which can be tested by sequencing the donor's DNA (not the sperm).

Comment author: Lumifer 09 January 2014 06:52:52PM 2 points [-]

All we need is to know that these variables are heritable

Partially heritable.

So, let's get a bit more specific. Can you give a description (in whatever terms you like) of a donor which who will provide "high-quality" sperm of the kind that you're looking for?

Comment author: DanArmak 09 January 2014 08:31:47PM 4 points [-]

Certainly, few things are perfectly heritable. 0.5 heritability (correlation), as claimed for IQ, is quite impressive.

I can list the qualities I would look for. Keeping in mind that I'm not in fact looking for sperm donors, don't have or want children, and other people would certainly want (or prioritize) other things - but that should still allow a market.

  • High IQ. In addition to regular IQ tests it's probably good to look at other factors like education and other intellectual achievements - would need to research to know what to look for exactly.
  • Physically attractive (would need to research how heritable this is)
  • Good personality factors - high conscientiousness, etc (ditto)
  • Above average height for my population, but not too tall. I remember that height is positively correlated with various good life outcomes; would need to check how tall is 'too tall'.
  • Racial appearance matching mine and my partner's, and presumably also matching the local socially dominant group (Ashkenazi Jewish in my case)
  • Good physical health, strength (lifetime)
  • Medical history without diseases that are known to be heritable (donor and his family)
  • Gene sequencing to screen for known genetic predispositions to certain diseases (donor and his family)
  • Donor's family known to be long-lived
  • Screening for factors known to adversely impact sperm (e.g. exposure to mutagens, history of cancer, advanced age at time of donation)
  • Donor should have already had children (whether natural or from donated sperm) that were healthy, to indicate the absence of de novo deleterious mutations in the donor's sperm cell line

There are many factors I would want, but I don't know how heritable they are, and would need to research. But the above list should already lead to a much better than chance outcome that would be worth a significant price paid to the sperm bank, if I trusted the bank to ensure these qualities (to a certain degree of certainty, etc.)

Comment author: David_Gerard 12 January 2014 10:31:43AM 2 points [-]

In practice, very little of this is checked for or marketed. They check for sexually-transmitted diseases, they check for non-negligibly likely genetic problems (e.g. Tay-Sachs in Ashkenazi-descended people, sickle-cell in West African-descended people). It's possible someone is marketing sperm along the lines you posit, but I'd consider it non-negligible that they're scamming.

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