As The Guardian recently reported, a baby has been born from sperm collected 26 years ago, raising serious ethical questions about long-term gamete storage and its many societal implications.[1] In 1996, 21-year-old Peter Hickles was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In preparation for treatment, which carried the risk of permanent infertility, Hickles was advised to freeze some of his sperm, in case he later wanted to have children. His treatment was successful, but he never felt the time for having children was right, so his sperm remained in storage.

Two and a half decades later, Hickles, now 47, and his fiancé wanted to try to have a child. Though he had initially been told his frozen sperm would be good for only 10 years, advances in cryogenics technology meant that his sample was still viable, so the couple embarked on a series of $36,000 IVF treatments. These were ultimately successful, and their son Kai was born in October 2022.[2]

 While the birth of a child is always miraculous in a sense, Hickles’s “miracle baby” is not as unique as one might think. He does not even have the distinction of being the baby born from the oldest cryogenically frozen sperm: a journal article from 2005 reported on a successful birth after sperm storage of 28 years, and a 2013 article recounts the birth of twins from semen that was 40 years old.[3]

The Legalities of Preservation

Although Hickles’s baby may not have broken any records, his birth highlights a recent change in U.K. law that enables patients to store their eggs, sperm, and embryos for up to 55 years, providing they reconsent every 10 years.[4] The intent of the new legislation is to give people more flexibility in how they use these reproductive materials—whether to have children of their own or donate them to others. Under previous legislation, sperm could not be used after ten years except in very specific circumstances.

Though the new limit is quite generous, scientists say there is no medical reason to set limits at all:

The legal 55-year limit has nothing to do with the shelf life of sperm, or for any other scientific reasons. It’s more to do with what parliamentarians felt was right for society. But since frozen sperm are effectively in suspended animation, once they are frozen I don’t see why they couldn’t be kept for hundreds of years if the law allowed it.[5]

“If the law allowed it” certainly refers to the situation in the United States, where there are no federal laws governing the long-term storage of sperm. While doctors are encouraged to follow the guidelines of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), these are not legally binding. And, while ASRM has released several practice guidelines related to sperm and oocyte cryopreservation, they have not given any time limit for these materials’ use. In fact, their patient fact sheet on “Male Cancer, Cryopreservation, and Fertility” merely states that “sperm can be stored indefinitely” and that “sperm that have been frozen for over 20 years have been used to create pregnancies.”[6]

General Ethical Concerns

There are already many ethical problems related to modern reproductive technologies in general, and these extended time periods for storing sperm and other reproductive materials raise an additional host of ethical issues.

At the most basic level, the use of reproductive materials that have been stored for decades has not been well researched. Although cases like Hickles’s demonstrate that it is certainly possible to have a healthy baby from sperm frozen for almost 30 years, little has been done to assess potential long-term effects on the child. Perhaps research will show that there are no concerns here, but until that research is done, we must be honest about what we do and do not know.

Questions could also be raised about the money involved in long-term storage. Infertility treatments and assisted reproduction have become big business, with an annual U.S. revenue of $8 billion and estimated worldwide revenue of $25 billion.[7] Clinics are quick to highlight the ways they are helping people who struggle with infertility, yet it must not be forgotten that these infertility clinics are not charities but are trying to make money. Long-term storage could be quite lucrative for them; while there are costs associated with running a secure storage facility, it would allow them to take patients and turn them into “subscribers” who must pay annual fees to keep their reproductive materials in storage. Is this a good or wise use of an individual’s resources? What happens if the owners fall behind in their payments? Are their materials discarded or donated to others without their consent? Furthermore, as the practice becomes more accepted, will providers and consumers begin to demand that insurance policies cover these costs as well?

Preserving reproductive materials for decades will also create new issues related to informed consent. There have already been legal cases where women or the parents of deceased men have fought for the right to harvest sperm from their deceased husbands, fiancés, or sons.[8] Such cases already push the boundaries of informed consent; how many more quandaries might arise when that sperm is kept around for decades? Or what if the widow decides she no longer wants to have a child with the deceased’s sperm and chooses to donate it to someone else? These legal and ethical knots are just some of the many problems raised by long-term cryopreservation.

Increasing Commodification

Cryopreservation of reproductive materials also raises concerns about the commodification of children. Sperm and eggs are increasingly being turned into commodities to be scientifically tested, rated, graded, and manipulated. Now, they can be stored until further notice or discarded when no longer wanted. In many cases, the commodification is even more explicit—while the term “donation” is usually used when someone gives sperm or eggs to a clinic, donors are generally compensated, meaning it is not a donation, but a sale. Reducing the materials for reproduction to a scientific technique or a business transaction is not a healthy perspective to cultivate around the conception and birth of children.

As the materials of reproduction are commodified, so too can be the child who is born from them. The steps of artificial reproduction—gamete collection and retrieval, attempts to select for certain traits, IVF, and implantation (and thousands of dollars spent throughout the process)—come uncomfortably close to “buying” a child. This could also place undue burdens on the children produced from these materials as they grow up—after so much time and money has been poured into their conception and birth, parents could easily fall into a mindset of expecting a good “return” on their investment.

The Nature of Families

Long-term storage also raises issues regarding the nature of familial relationships. Donor-conceived children often seek out their biological parents even when they have been raised in loving families. Despite our attempts to separate sex and reproduction, and even genetics and reproduction, people still feel a strong urge to understand “where they came from.” What will be the psychological effects, then, for a donor-conceived child or adult who searches for his family but cannot find or connect with them? The reasons could be numerous. Longer time frames from donation to conception make it easier to lose track of records and contact information. They also open up the possibility, if not likelihood, of the donor dying before his or her reproductive materials are ever used. There is also the potential for psychological responses on the part of donor conceived children that were never before possible, such as feeling “out of time” from being born decades or even centuries after their parents’ donation.

On a societal level, long-term preservation has the potential to severely disrupt familial relationships. What would it be like to have siblings 50 years older than you? Or to be born of a surrogate when your parents are elderly or deceased? Using cryopreservation, a parent could preserve his materials when he is young, and then, when well past reproductive age, hire a surrogate to have biological children—but would this be a good situation for anyone involved? According to ethics professor Julian Savulescu, the fact that we have never had to ask these and related questions means that “we’re really doing an experiment.”[9]

Even if we can anticipate many of the ethical challenges raised by long-term cryopreservation, there may be even more we cannot anticipate. For example, the human genome could drastically change over the next several hundred years. If sperm were preserved for centuries and then used to have a child, what might the effects be, both on the child and the world of the future? Could such children be more vulnerable to new diseases that have arisen in that time? Could they catch and reintroduce diseases that were thought to have been eradicated? Would they even be able to reproduce with a person of the future? We simply cannot know.

While these last worries may be merely hypothetical, or even seem like they belong to the realm of science fiction, it should be clear that the long-term storage and subsequent use of reproductive materials raises a host of ethical and philosophical issues. We have a responsibility to take these questions seriously. Just because science is capable of doing something does not mean it is good to do so. God has graciously given us a natural means of reproduction, and we tamper with it at our own peril.

Notes

[1] Rachel Hall, “‘Miracle’ Baby Opens Debate over Possible Use of Centuries-Old Sperm,” The Guardian (Oct. 28, 2022): https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/oct/28/miracle-baby-opens-debate-over-possible-use-of-centuries-old-sperm.

[2] James Somper, “Little Miracle: I’ve Had a Miracle Baby Boy from Sperm Sample I gave in 1996 as I Battled Cancer—I’m in Disbelief,” The Sun (Oct. 25, 2022): https://www.thesun.co.uk/health/20223462/dad-miracle-baby-sperm-sample-1996-cancer/.

[3] Joseph Feldschuh et al., “Successful Sperm Storage for 28 Years,” Fertility and Sterility (2005): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fertnstert.2005.05.015; Andras Z. Szell et al., “Live Births from Frozen Human Semen Stored for 40 Years,” Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics (2013): https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs10815-013-9998-9.

[4] “New Law Comes into Force Giving Greater Flexibility for Fertility Patients,” Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority: https://www.hfea.gov.uk/about-us/news-and-press-releases/2022/new-law-comes-into-force-giving-greater-flexibility-for-fertility-patients/.

[5] Allan Pacey, quoted in Hall, “‘Miracle’ Baby Opens Debate,” ibid., note 1.

[6] “Male Cancer, Cryopreservation, and Fertility,” American Society for Reproductive Medicine (2015): https://www.reproductivefacts.org/news-and-publications/fact-sheets-and-infographics/male-cancer-cryopreservation-and-fertility/.

[7] Pasquale Patrizio et al., “The Changing World of IVF: The Pros and Cons of New Business Models Offering Assisted Reproductive Technologies,” Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics (2022): https://doi.org/10.1007/s10815-022-02399-y.

[8] For example, Dorian Block, “Judge Allows Wife to Harvest Dead Husband’s Sperm,” The Daily News (April 18, 2009): https://www.nydailynews.com/2009/04/18/judge-allows-wife-to-harvest-dead-husbands-sperm/; Kelly Pilgram, “Grieving Widow Wins Right to Use Dead Husband’s Sperm to Have Second Child,” New York Post (June 21, 2019): https://nypost.com/2019/06/21/grieving-widow-wins-right-to-use-dead-husbands-sperm-to-have-second-child.

[9] Quoted in Hall, “‘Miracle’ Baby Opens Debate,” ibid., note 1.