The Real Problem With Sperm Banks
By Keli Goff,
The Daily Beast
| 10. 07. 2014
Untitled Document
Many are outraged by the story of a woman suing a sperm bank for mistakenly providing her with sperm from a black donor, instead of a white donor as she requested. Jennifer Cramblett, who is white, later gave birth to a biracial daughter whom she and her partner are raising—a daughter who will one day grow up to read that her mother felt being impregnated with her was such a hardship that it warranted a lawsuit.
The crux of Cramblett’s complaint is essentially that they didn’t request black sperm and weren’t prepared to welcome a black child into their family—a family that, according to the lawsuit, has some extended relatives who are a little bit racist, and who live in a community that’s a little bit racist.
My heart breaks for this little girl in the same way it breaks for every kid who appears to have been dealt a bad hand in the parental lottery. But I’m not outraged by Jennifer Cramblett’s lawsuit, at least no more than I would be outraged by the Ku Klux...
Related Articles
Cathy Tie seems to be good at starting businesses but not so dedicated to maintaining them. CGS, like many others, first heard of her thanks to Caiwei Chen and Antonio Regalado in MIT Technology Review, May 2025, as the partner (perhaps bride) of the notorious Chinese scientist He Jiankui, described in the headline as “China’s Frankenstein.” He prefers “Chinese Darwin.” She ran his Twitter account for a while, contributing such gems as:
Get in luddite, we’re going gene editing...
By Gabriele Pichlhofer and Tino Plümecke, Guest Contributors
| 03.25.2026
A German translation of this interview will be published in May 2026 in the German GID MAGAZIN, which focuses on the market for reproductive technologies. For more information, visit: Gen-ethisches Netzwerk
Egg donation is currently prohibited in Germany and Switzerland, but both countries have been debating its legalization for years. In Switzerland, a legal framework is currently being developed, with a first draft expected by the end of the year. Yet the debate rarely draws on scientific evidence. Instead...
By Charles Pulliam-Moore, The Verge | 03.21.2026
Like many people, director Valerie Veatch was intrigued when OpenAI first released its Sora text-to-video generative AI model to the public in 2024. Though she didn’t fully understand the technology, she was curious about what it could do, and she...
By Paula Siverino Bavio, BioNews | 03.16.2026
State flag of Peru via Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC by SA 2.0
A recent surrogacy case in Peru had a good outcome for one family, but does not provide wider certainty for families, surrogates or clinicians, writes Dr Paula...