Out there,
there are a number of people who are into healthy living. They watch their salt
and sugar intake and they drink water. They also go to the gym and so on. Suffice
to say, I am so not one of them!
I am not one
of them because, whenever I read the health pages in newspapers or magazines,
the stories are alarmist. One day they will tell you that drinking two glasses
of wine a day is good for you and come the following week, they say it’s not
good. One day tea is good for you and the next, it isn’t. Red meat is not good
for you as is pork, coffee and even some vegetables so they claim. If you
really follow the health pages, they would have us starve to death because all
that we eat is not good for our bodies. And I am not prepared to do that – to
starve.
However, in
the UK, the health experts are in a panic and not because the amount of pork
people are eating or wine they are quaffing. They have a far more important
issue to worry about like the lack of good quality sperms! Yes, in the UK, the
men who donate their sperm to the sperm banks are donating low quality sperms.
Just like we
donate blood in Uganda, in the US and Europe, men also donate sperms which,
makes good economic sense. When we donate blood, all we get from Nakasero Blood
Bank, is a warm Coke or Fanta and a stale Marie biscuit. They don’t even give
you transport.
But donating
sperm in the US is a different matter. Not only will they give you Playboy
magazine or a porn movie to watch whilst you are in the hospital cubicle and
for the lack of a better phrase to use – ‘masturbating into a test tube’, they
also pay you $80 (Sh180,000) for your efforts!
Though the UK does not pay, you can be
compensated for "loss of earnings". The amount you can claim depends
on how long the ‘masturbating took’. Hmm!
Now this is where Allan
Pacey, chairman of the British Fertility Society comes in. In a press statement
issued last week, he said: 'We simply do not have enough sperm donors in the
UK'.
I managed to get hold of
Pacey’s e-mail address and this is what I had to tell him.
Dear Mr. Pacey,
It is quite obvious why you don’t have enough sperm
donors. In the US they pay $80 a pop and in the UK, you get nothing. Don’t you
think that men are bored of locking themselves up in the clinic cubicle with a
test tube, a pornographic movie or Playboy without getting financial
compensation? Do you know how much effort they have to put in while
masturbating?
In Uganda, we have many men who are idle. With your
permission, I could round up a hundred fit men and have them flown over to
London where they would be happy to donate their sperm on condition that they
are compensated.
As expected, Mr. Pacey has yet
to reply. But what are the long term effects to those born by test tube? I mean,
in the school playgrounds when a kid asks, where does your dad come from, what
would the reply be? “From a test tube?
And if Uganda had a sperm
bank, would the corporate fraternity and celebs line up to give their sperms?
Who sperm would be on demand? Stephen Kiprotich? Golola Moses? Amooti, the
comedian? Or perhaps James ‘FatBoy’ Onen? They downside for the women who would
buy the sperm, is that the clinic will not tell you whose sperm you got. Think
about it.
So are you paid by the second or paid by the millilitre? And what about Equal Opportunities for us ladies..... hmmmm? Unfair employment opportunities for men, I say.
ReplyDeleteBut of course, you would not answer you're "from a test tube" no more than you or I might answer we're from a testicle or an ovary (which strictly speaking is the truth, is it not?)
Back in the real world, women who go down the sperm donor route are very selective about the donor; there is no end of physical and intellectual data analysis of the man's genes before the lady makes her choice, though you have to ask yourself if it isn't easier just to get drunk and pick someone up in a bar.....?