The Racial and Ethnic Disparity and Homophobia in U.S. Sperm Banks
A new scientific journal article described the racial and ethnic breakdown of sperm donors and compared this to demographics from the United States census as well as sperm donor recipients. The results are surprising from a racial and ethnic perspective, but I also learned from this article that men who have sex with men (MSMs) are prohibited from donating to sperm banks in the U.S. In this article, I discuss the implication for this and how assisted reproductive technology (ART) in general needs to be more queer friendly.
Navigating Fertility Clinic Success Rates in the United States
Are you starting your journey through assisted reproduction and overwhelmed with how to choose a fertility clinic? After all, how do you know which clinics are ‘good?’ Does ‘good’ to you mean how many procedure they do in a year, or is it more about their success rates? I recently discovered that the U.S. government has a law that requires the approximately 500 fertility clinics in the country to report their data on the patients they work with, the procedures they do, an the success of these procedures in a single database that is curated by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). In this article, I review the database, explain how to approach it, discuss what is missing - specifically for queer intended parents - and share my plans for a more queer-friendly database.