Confessions of a Sperm Donor

Aug. 31, 2006 — -- In discreet laboratories all over the United States, some of the most valuable material in the world is deposited. It arrives by an obscure series of arrangements -- is often unregulated and always unseen. And it is sold at a price to desperate people prepared to do almost anything to conceive a child.

Welcome to the secret world of the sperm donor -- featured on "Nightline" tonight at 11:30 p.m. ET.

Kirk Maxey was one of the most generous sperm donors on the planet. As a medical student during the 1980s he regularly donated sperm. It was originally suggested to him by his wife, a registered nurse at a local fertility clinic. At just $20 per deposit, it was hardly a lucrative business.

"It was around the time we had my first son and she thought, 'Oh gee, you are making healthy, nice-looking kids, you should be a sperm donor,'" said Maxey, who is now a doctor.

When he arrived at the clinic to make his first deposit, he was not given any counseling or subjected to detailed questioning. Instead, he simply completed a brief form, which asked some basic questions.

"I was given a little quarter-page legal thing to sign that just said it was my responsibility to let them know if I had a sexually transmitted disease," he said. "And then the one line that said 'and this will remain anonymous.' Very vague and very general."

Back in the 1980s, the medical screening of donors was fairly basic. Their sperm would be checked for sexually transmitted diseases, HIV and some chromosomal abnormalities, but little else.

"There's so little regulation in this area, sperm banks don't have to follow that many rules," says Debora Spar, a professor at the Harvard Business School and author of a book about artificial reproduction called "The Baby Business." "The better sperm banks will, for sure, ask for your parents' medical history. Do they go back and trace the full medical records of a sperm donor's parents? Probably not."

Once cleared by the clinic, donors like Maxey could be called, often at inconvenient moments, because the technology for freezing sperm had not been developed back then.