5

Yes, There've Been Eugenics Sperm Banks, And More Recently Than You'd Think

The Repository for Germinal Choice was started by Robert Graham, eyewear tycoon and amateur eugenicist. You probably associate eugenics with the Nazis, but as Cracked has mentioned, before that, it was an American movement. For some reason, we've always been slow to take credit for this innovation. Read Graham's writings and you'll see the exact argument from Idiocracy: Evolution no longer favors the fittest, because the people most likely to reproduce are rarely the best among us. ("You want me to take time off building this interstellar ion drive to go raise a family!?!")

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"You know the rule: No unauthorized breeding until we're all aboard the space ark."

He wasn't suggesting genocide. Instead, he proposed a series of solutions, such as paying college students to have kids, corporations paying for promising couples' childcare, and reorganizing cities to encourage child rearing. Then he suggested storing and distributing the sperm of the nation's most promising men.

Graham began scouting and hiring talent who already had experience in the "sperm collection industry" (and it's the brave soul who responds to that particular listing in the classifieds). With their help, he quietly began operations in the 1970s. He first considered using West Point cadets as donors but then decided on the Nobel prize as the best indicator of worth.

He started by contacting every Nobel winner in California. When any showed interest, they'd meet at a hotel, Graham providing a specimen cup. He adamantly bragged that his donors needed only their imagination, not porn, to produce a sample -- long considered the mark of true genius.

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"If you can't seal the deal with thoughts about plowing Marie Curie or Mary Shelley, then you're not what we're looking for."

4

My Father Was ... Not What I Expected

I saw an article called "Help Slate tell the story of the Nobel Prize sperm bank." The author, David Plotz, was inviting anyone connected to the bank to reach out to him. I did, and soon learned of the first flaw in Graham's utopian vision -- it had very few actual Nobel laureates as donors. Still, he was drawing from the best and brightest, so my father had probably won some slightly less prestigious awards.

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You can reliably pick up a 7-10 split? Welcome to the future of humanity.

The article's author spent a year following scattered clues about who my father could be until one day, he called me with the news that my bio dad was a Florida doctor named "Jeremy Sampson" [actual name/location changed], and he wanted to talk to me.

The first time he called, we talked for over two hours, we were both so curious about each other's lives and astonished that we had actually come into contact. He truly was extremely intelligent. He said he was an author, spoke and read over seven languages, worked for NASA before becoming a doctor, and scored in the top 1 percent on his MCAT. He had a great sense of humor and a relaxed, laid-back personality ... the exact opposite of the man who'd raised me.

He seemed to love the idea of being a father to me. It was, you could say, too good to be true.

Just once we'd like to type that without needing to cue ominous thunder.

3

That's When The Agents Started To Follow Me

Sometimes they'd be in a taxi, just a few cars behind me. Other times, it would be a limo. Most alarmingly, it would be a helicopter, hovering in the sky and staring down at me.

It was pretty clear that my connection to the Repository for Germinal Choice was somehow responsible for this. I read Robert Graham's book Future of Man, and it explained that people with high IQ have historically been persecuted by society and are, as a result, less likely to survive even though they paradoxically benefit that society. As a bearer of high-IQ genes myself, I was now a target for both government surveillance and perhaps more sinister action. It sounds unlikely written out like this, but I knew it was true because my birth really was part of a conspiracy of sorts that had been kept from me. So this new development was merely an extension of that.

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A bizarre, difficult to justify extension.

2

It Turned Out The Repository's Screening Process Was Far From Perfect

Even now, I often don't believe I have schizophrenia. I get delusions -- everything I wrote out to you in the last section about being followed was a delusion; the rest of this article is true -- and they seem very convincing in the moment. But the knowledge that many of my half-siblings also show symptoms persuades me of the truth.

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Some patterns don't require genius genes to pick up on.

1

Sperm Donation Needs Reform

If I had known I was donor-conceived, I would have had the legal right to non-identifying information about my donor collected during their screening process. Those records no longer exist, and it was only through a year of detective work by a dedicated journalist that I learned the truth. Meeting my father earlier could have helped me catch my mental illness earlier, and for other donor-conceived individuals, this may mean the difference between life or death.

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Turns out all those "Family history" forms serve a function besides just filling time in a hospital waiting room.

I've since talked with other donor children. "Genetic bewilderment" is the best term I've heard to describe the confusion one feels when they know on some level that they are not related to the family members they live with, yet feel helpless as to what to do about that.

From what I've seen, about half end up with little to no interest in searching for more information. But the other half desperately wants to know more about where they come from for reasons usually related to needing an accurate family medical history or to fulfill a lost sense of identity.

That's why many are now pushing for reform in the way sperm donation works. Including this guy who had 400 donor babies and concludes the system needs more oversight ... that seems about as qualified as an opinion as you're going to get.

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Can't get closer to the issue than a guy with more kids than a rural school district.

I've put together a petition laying out a few realistic steps we can take to respect the rights of future donor children. If you have an opinion on this, it's up for citizen comment until March 27.

As for me, I now have two children of my own and married my high school sweetheart. Oh, and she's Czech -- so at least I know I didn't accidentally wind up with one of Jeremy's many other offspring.

Ryan Menezes is an editor and interviewer here at Cracked. Follow him on Twitter for bits cut from this article and other stuff no one should see.

For more insider perspectives, check out I'm In History Books And I'm Only 28: 5 Weird Realities and Abortion On Request: 5 Facts Of Life As A Surrogate Mom.

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