The fate of children born from sperm banks

25 years ago, a bank offered for the first time sperm from Nobel laureates and Olympic champions. What do those kids who carry the gene smart?

Rober Graham is a millionaire admiring scholars so he established a famous sperm bank across the United States: sperm bank of Nobel Prize winners . He repeatedly attacked the most famous scientists of the time by letters, telephones, and even unexpectedly came to find them at the lab just to get their sperm into a tube. Pasteurize. Graham persuaded these people that they could hold the fate of mankind in hand: " People must control the evolutionary process ", that is because according to him, the poor, the sick, the mentally disabled Many children are born, so people are on their way back to their intellectual starting point. According to Graham, " intellectual selection " is the only way to avoid that backward path.

From Graham's bank, 215 children were born until the bank closed in 1999. Mr. David Plotz, an American journalist of electronic magazine Slate, found out whether the children carried the " super gene ". how now He found 30 of them. " Sperm detective " - as Plotz calls himself - also interviewed some people for sperm before. In his newly published book on this issue, Plotz mentions one of the greatest questions of science: How much power lies in the gene and the training and education process that makes up the personality. What percentage in forming a person.

How much power in genetic genes?

First, Plotz came to a modest conclusion: among sperm donors, there were only three Nobel Prize winners, including Professor William Shokley, who invented the semiconductor. However, the " breeding material " of these three scientists is so bad that no sample of their sperms can be fertilized.

Graham not only took sperms from scientists, but also from young but famous scientists, Olympic champions and millionaires to come up on their own feet. Among the children born from his bank there are also very good cases. Plotz met Joy's mother. Joy's genetic father was given the alias " Donor White " and according to records, " Donor White " was an outstanding young scientist. Plotz also managed to find this genetic father and confirmed that he is now a famous scientist. His 13-year-old genetic daughter herself is also a smart girl who always leads the class. She is also a young ballet talent, has long legs and a very mature and confident style. Plotz commented, Joy is the girl model that teachers like in class and parents like to be in the family.

The three children of Lorraine, a neurologist, are good kids. The 10-year-old son and two 6-year-old twins attended the best schools and took home the highest score. She told them that it was so great that everyone around them competed for care. She came to the decision to have a baby thanks to the sperm bank, because in her daily work, she always faced cases of intellectual disability. She said that the need to give birth to " essential " children is perfectly normal, because " everyone who plant trees must choose for themselves good seeds ".

However, will the children of Lorraine become smart because of the "superior genetic material " she used?

Plotz doubts that hypothesis. He took the example of two children Tom and Alton. They are two children with different parents, but don't know it. Both were born from the genetic material of " Donor Coral ", a perfect sperm sample of sperm bank with the following profile: " Excellent scientist, intelligence index 160, playing chess, piano, childish love ". That must be enough so that both Tom and Alton will later become leaders in their generation. But in fact, the two children developed completely differently.

Alton grew up in a suburb of Boston. He went to school at a school of " specialized school , selected class " and got the highest score. He is a great pianist and is very good at dancing. A statue he composed was displayed at an exhibition of works by talented children at Harvard University. Alton is a persistent, confident and ambitious child. When the mother told him about his real father, he calmly acknowledged that fact.

Tom is not like that. He was an unstable child, growing up in a trivial area in a city in the western United States. He attended a school of the same type and only brought home the average score. He didn't play the piano but sang dry songs in a rap band. His mother kept her father's secret secret. Until Tom announced that he would drop out of school to attend a Wrestling school, the mother was forced to tell him that he was carrying a clever gene, hoping he would abandon that crazy idea. However, the truth about the genetic father further deepened him into the crisis of his still-hovering identity. In desperation, he left to find his father and himself became a father. When he was only 17 years old, he made a Russian girl go to America to become pregnant. Tom suffered under the burden of " smart genes on his shoulders ". Should he be a good, intelligent pupil commensurate with his father's IQ of 160? The pressure must match the genetic information that was released when Tom met his biological father. It was Plotz and the Russian girl who joined Tom and the newborn baby in Miami. There, the journey to find her father ended in a shabby hut, where Tom's genetic father lived on Mexican-style drug dealers.

The " Donor Coral " real name is Jeremy and still looks pretty good compared to the late 40s and early 50s. However, the character described by him as a " child favorite " is limited to each the creation of the race only: he is the author of more than a dozen children and walks with that woman. In addition, he is the genetic father of more than 20 children through sperm banks! It was determined that Jeremy's parents were not as intelligent as described in the extract. His father was not an oceanographer and his sister had never received a piano award. Jeremy himself has never participated in an IQ test. Thus, the boy Alton mentioned above could not receive the piano gift from his father Jeremy. It can be said that he has completely developed without his father's genetic gene.

Among the children born from sperm bank Plotz found, most succeeded in school. Some also have sports skills and music.

Is the main cause of talent being the parents' consciousness?

Plotz does not believe that the talents of children are due to the genetic genes they receive through sperm banks. He said that the main reason lies in the customers who come to search for sperm at Graham's bank! Most of them are ambitious, active women who want to shorten the journey to find an optimal partner and contribute genetic genes. Plotz also found a very interesting gene trait: those children are usually just like their mothers, not like their father.

What is certain is that this huge experiment by Robert Graham failed. Even a child who is deemed to be best suited to his expectations does not develop "on schedule". Now Doron Blake is 23 years old. At the age of 2, he sat at the computer table, citing quotes from the Hamlet play, up to 5 with an IQ of 180. Both the mother and Graham took advantage of his talent: the mother treated him as a source of money. And Graham considers you the ideal advertising icon. Before countless television lenses, they introduced the boy as a symbol of a sperm bank. The boy Doron Blake, who later became a special but lonely person, had to exclaim: "I feel like I've always been searched and questioned by others."

While Graham expected the children of sperm banks to study computers to develop the world, Doron Blake studied comparative religious theory! Doron dismissed math and physics from his schedule. Plotz commented: "It seems that he deliberately avoids his intelligence".

New world ( according to Spiegel )