Britain to get sperm bank

London: Britain is to get its first NHS-funded national sperm bank to make it easier for lesbian couples and single women to have children.

For as little as £300 (Dh1,853) — less than half the cost of the service at a private clinic — they will be able to search an online database and choose an anonymous donor on the basis of his ethnicity, height, profession and even hobbies.

The bank, which is due to open in October, will then send out that donor’s sperm to a clinic of the client’s choice for use in trying for a baby.

Heterosexual couples will also be able to benefit, but the move — funded by the Department of Health — is largely designed to meet the increasing demand from thousands of women who want to start a family without having a relationship with a man. Critics last night called it a `dangerous social experiment’ that could result in hundreds of fatherless `designer families’.

The former Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, said last night: “It is the welfare of the child that must come first and not the fact that people want a particular kind of baby.’

Bishop Michael, who once chaired the ethics committee of Britain’s fertility watchdog, added: “This is social experimentation. It’s one thing for a child not to have a mother or father through tragedy, but it is another to plan children to come into the world without a father.”

The National Sperm Bank will be based at Birmingham Women’s NHS Foundation Trust, which currently runs an existing NHS fertility clinic and recruits sperm donors from the local population.

Funded by a £77,000 Government grant, the bank will be run by the National Gamete Donation Trust (NGDT) which this year received an additional £120,000 of public money to organise egg and sperm donation. Over the next three years the NGDT aims to recruit at least 1,000 men and collect sufficient donations for the sperm bank to meet demand.

Laura Witjens, NGDT chief executive, said: “There are people who are medically infertile or practically infertile — they want to use donation services in the UK but can’t do so because there isn’t enough donated sperm.

“The [demand from] same-sex couples and single women has grown exponentially. It’s become more socially acceptable to say, I haven’t found a guy yet, don’t want to wait for him, still want a child.”

She added: “The aim is that we will have enough surplus sperm so that we will be able to set up a service for people like single women and same-sex couples.”

She described this group as `customers rather than patients’.

Shortage of donors

Britain has a major shortage of sperm donors, whose anonymity is preserved until any children they father reach the age of 18.

Women who want to have a baby using donated sperm have been routinely waiting for up to two years, with many eventually forced to seek donors abroad.

Heterosexual couples with fertility problems who need donations as part of IVF treatment will be among the customers of the new bank.

But a large percentage are predicted to be professional, single females who decide to have a baby without a man.

And based on current trends, more than a quarter of all the recipients are likely to be gay women.

Latest available figures from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority show that in 2011, 4,101 cycles of donor insemination were carried out in the UK.

Of these, 1,271 related to women registered with a female partner. That figure represents more than a quarter of the total and was a 23 per cent increase from the previous year.

Treatment resulted in the births of 161 babies to lesbian couples.

Witjens rejected suggestions that children suffer adverse consequences from lacking a father figure. “There is no evidence to suggest that children are better off with or without a father,” she said. “There’s never been a call — from us or the Department of Health — to reduce the access to sperm for same-sex or single women. That’s a non-issue.”

Witjens pointed to the removal of the reference to a `need for a father’ in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, when taking account of a child’s welfare when providing fertility treatment.

She added that the National Sperm Bank would also help prevent desperate women using murky unregulated services and going online to buy sperm. There are currently just two clinics in the UK where women can choose donors from an online list. Both are private and charge around £850 (Dh8,249) for the service.

NHS funding for fertility services, including donor insemination, is decided by regional Clinical Commissioning Groups and varies widely. CCGs are typically more likely to fund heterosexual couples struggling to conceive rather than lesbians or single women because they are considered to have more of a medical need. The NGDT hopes the sperm bank will be self-funding after a year.

A spokeswoman for the HFEA said: “We welcome the new National Sperm Bank which will help to ensure that the recruitment of donors and the availability of donor sperm is better organised.”