Measure of Success Elusive for Sperm...

Ten years after the birth of the first baby from his sperm bank, Robert Graham has a 1 1/2-year waiting list of women, a wall full of pictures of beautiful and mostly blond children and a shortage of good men.

Although frustrated by lack of tangible evidence that his theory holds up in real life, Graham remains captivated by the controversial notion that he can somehow improve the stock of the human race.

By mixing and matching wanna-be mothers with the sperm of some of society’s most scholarly men, Graham maintains this can become a better world.

“All nature asks is that we tilt the scales a little in its favor, and the babies will come out wonderful,” Graham says.

In 1981 he went public with his mission: the Repository for Germinal Choice. Based in Escondido, it would seek out the sperm of Nobel Prize winners to impregnate qualified women and then deliver to society what he thought of as better-bred babies--inherently brighter, more creative beings who would evolve into future leaders and intellectuals, kids who had it all going for them right from the get-go.

The critical outfall--including from Nobel laureates themselves--was swift and loud: How dare someone promote some sort of master race through the calculated marriage of sperm and egg? Only three Nobel winners donated sperm--and only one acknowledged his role: William B. Shockley, the Stanford physicist whose controversial theories correlating race and intelligence sparked public protests and tainted Graham’s efforts.

Graham’s attempts to recruit more Nobel winners to donate sperm collapsed, so he lowered his sights and cast his net out for men who are noted simply for their scholarly accomplishments, the kind of published scientists who are listed in Who’s Who references.

No one ever chose a Nobel laureate’s sperm--the men were probably too old anyway, Graham rationalized later--and today there is no more Nobel sperm in the bank.

Still, Graham has served as middleman of sorts, a stork mail-order house, in the birth of 156 babies, from Escondido to Cairo. Eleven women are pregnant, and 150 more are trying. And there’s a 1 1/2-year waiting list of women awaiting still more sperm to complete six-month quarantines as part of the screening and testing process to ensure that the sperm is free of the HIV virus and genes for cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs and other diseases.

The backlog was created in part when the repository stopped operations for several months while it set up a protocol for screening donors for the HIV virus.

Last week was the 10th birthday of the first child, Victoria.

And Graham’s inability to track her down suggests that this wealthy optometrist/industrialist-turned-sperm broker, who made his fortune by inventing the shatterproof eyeglass, might have difficulty measuring whether his philosophy is being successfully manifested through his Escondido-based sperm bank.

Victoria’s parents live somewhere in Texas, but Graham was unable to reach them, not even to wish his first sperm bank offspring a happy birthday--or find out how she’s doing in school, or at the piano, or in dance or on the soccer field.

Last year, when the repository marked its 10th anniversary of going public, Graham sent out detailed questionnaires to the parents of the sperm bank offspring, hoping to assess his work.

“We had a very poor response,” Graham, 85, concedes. “Most of them simply wouldn’t answer. We assume they don’t want to affirm that their child is exceptional.

“We want more scientific information, and this (survey attempt) taught us that we’re not a scientific project. We are a familial, constructive project. This project is in mid-stream. We’re getting positive results, but we won’t know for another 20 years if we’ve helped create better people.”

For some, there is no doubt.

Nine-year-old Doron Blake is the repository’s second child, borne by Los Angeles psychologist Afton Blake. At 2, he received his first computer; now, he’s on the brink of writing computer programs at his $13,000 computer, slowed only by the tedious necessity of attending school, says his grandmother, Dr. Winafred Lucas.

“His tutor says he’s the most brilliant student she’s ever had, of any age, and that in two years he’ll be designing computer programs for businesses if he wants to,” Lucas said.

“Nobody puts pressure on this kid to succeed, because no one has to,” she said. “He’s about ready for calculus, and can spell perfectly--like he was born knowing how to spell every word. He was reading Shakespeare when he was 6, and discussed Hamlet with his uncle, who is a screenwriter.

“I thought he should have some more age-appropriate books, so I got him the Black Stallion series. He liked it, but then he picked out Homer’s Iliad to read--the first version, in verse.”

Lucas acknowledges that the boy, who lives with his mother on Mt. Washington and who attends a nearby public magnet school for bright children, can at times “be stubborn and bratty.”

“It’s hard to handle that much intelligence,” she said.

Doron is familiar with the notoriety surrounding him. He has been on the television news program 48 Hours and last year was on the cover of California Magazine.

“He gets $500 an hour when he’s interviewed,” his grandmother said. “Afton won’t allow him to be interviewed, and he won’t do it, unless he’s paid. He hates doing interviews, but he does it like a little man. I’ve told him it’s like a job, and the money’s going to his college fund.”

Doron’s father, says Lucas, “is the top computer scientist in the country.”

Although they don’t pretend to know the father’s exact identity--the repository keeps such matters in strictest confidence--”we know approximately who he is,” Lucas said.

The sperm of 13 men are on deposit at Graham’s office, tucked in the corner of a wood-and-glass bank building on South Escondido Boulevard. In one office rest several liquid-nitrogen tanks, vapors spilling down onto the floor like some stage prop. These hold straws filled with the sperm of the donors that will be shipped out for insemination.

The donors are coded by color.

Mr. “Orange/Red” is said to be a “graduate student involved in genetic research,” a fair-skinned, golden-blond, 6-foot-4, 225-pound man with Austrian ancestry. “Very handsome; superb physique; warm; happy; confident,” are listed as some of his traits. He enjoys martial arts and Ping-Pong, plays the piano proficiently and “comes from a long line of talented professional individuals and has the energy and ambition to match his exceptional gifts.”

Then there’s Mr. “Grey/White,” a college letterman pursuing a doctorate who’s 210 pounds, 6-foot-3, with a full head of blond hair, described further as “ruggedly handsome, impressive presence, outgoing and positive.” He’s accomplished in judo and chess, is an expert marksman and enjoys the classics.

“Most of our donors are men of outstanding accomplishment,” according to the summary sheet. “This man is too young for that, but he has inherited, to an extraordinary degree, qualities which make outstanding accomplishment probable.”

The most sought-after donor at the repository is Mr. Fuchsia.

“He’s a biggie,” says Graham.

He is an Olympic gold medalist--but he won’t say from the Summer or Winter Games--”who beat everybody in the world in his sport. Tall, dark, handsome, bright, a successful businessman and author. He’s got quite a lot on the ball,” Graham boasts.

Minority branches of the population are not represented, but Graham says that hasn’t been for lack of effort. Only recently has the first Asian-American man agreed to donate sperm, and black and Latino men so far have refused him, he said.

All this talk bothers some people who say the human race isn’t meant to be propagated and improved upon through such selective breeding.

“The scientific foundation for what the repository promotes--that by picking parents with certain genetic endowments we can create children more likely to have those genetic endowments--is flimsy,” says Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Minnesota.

“Society should find it troubling that someone can run an unlicensed and unregulated experiment in eugenics,” he said. In addition, he complained, the process gives parents high expectations, which in turn put “an enormous load” on the child.

“It seems we’re treating the baby as nothing more than the fulfillment of parental wishes. Yes, we want children to flourish and become who they are, but not by treating the child as a cluster of expectations,” Caplan said.

“And society needs to be very leery about judging who’s got good genetic material.”

Besides, Caplan says, “it seems we’re giving scientific control over an intimate area of having babies. Is it possible that someday we’ll look at every embryo and do a genetic test and throw out the bad ones? We’re making scientific and technical something that should be mysterious.”

Graham has heard all the criticisms over the years and has his stock answers at the ready.

“We give childless couples a family, and the woman the best child she could have,” he says. “We increase the offspring of some of our best men. And we give children the best possible start. All in one package.”

He waves his hand toward the dozens of photographs of sperm bank babies that decorate his office wall, like some scrapbook portfolio of the repository’s accomplishments. They’re all beautiful. Most are blond.

One toddler is posed next to a liquid nitrogen tank that delivered his father’s sperm.

“If you pay attention to the genetics, the results are even better than you can hope,” he says. “I’ve never heard a complaint (from a parent). I hear enthusiasm. They’re all such darlings.”

Graham says that, despite his greatest hopes, he realizes he’s not skewing the genetic stock of the human race, what with fewer than 200 babies out there.

“We’re putting a few highly useful leaders and creators into the race, which should help everybody. We’re not preempting nature. We’re only stepping in when nature fails because the husband is infertile or is genetically flawed--maybe he has diabetes--and he doesn’t want to create a child that may contract the same flaw.

“I’m more convinced than ever that this is a wonderful idea, tremendously gratifying, and that lots of other people should do the same thing.”

One man is: former repository employee Paul Smith, a dog breeder who was fired by Graham after he was named in the only two lawsuits to be slapped against the repository.

In one, Smith was sued for allegedly saying, in a magazine interview, that an Oakland sperm bank produced “defective” babies. That lawsuit died in the courts.

The other lawsuit alleged that Graham and Smith sent out dead sperm. That case was settled out of court.

Smith went on to establish his own Pasadena-based sperm bank in 1984. Called Heredity Choice, it seeks out many of the same candidates for sperm that Graham wants.

The main difference, Smith says, between his sperm bank and Graham’s is that Smith doesn’t reject women--as Graham says he does--who are single or older than 38. (In fact, Afton Blake, the mother of Doron, is unmarried, according to her mother, while New York City mom Adrienne Ramm was, by her own account, older than 40 when she had her third sperm bank baby.)

Smith says many of the women he serves are lesbians, and that the success of his sperm bank is due to “word of mouth in North Hollywood.”

But Smith shares Graham’s philosophy--one they both garnered from Dr. Hermann J. Muller, a 1946 Nobel Prize-winning geneticist who was concerned about what he sees as the declining genetic endowment of mankind.

“The human race is already rather masterful, and I want to make it more so,” Smith says.

The American Fertility Society estimates that there are about 100 sperm banks in the nation--but none of the others are quite like Graham’s or Smith’s. Although sperm banks in general will describe the basic physical traits of the donors so women can try to create babies who might reflect their own husband’s looks, and although sperm banks are required in many states to test the sperm for AIDS and other diseases, only Graham’s and Smith’s specifically seek out the upper-echelon donors.

It’s a difficult search.

Graham reads scientific literature for men of accomplishment, then cross-references them against Who’s Who catalogues before sending them a letter that starts: “Due to your outstanding achievements, you would be an excellent donor for our Repository for Germinal Choice.”

Graham estimates he makes contact with 100 men every year. About half will entertain follow-up discussions--and about half of those will not pass medical muster for one reason or another. Family background in alcoholism, for instance, is cause for automatic rejection, as is early signs of diabetes.

Of the 10 or 20 men who are medically qualified, most of those drop out because their wives object, Graham said.

“A lot of wives feel their husband is their property,” he said. “But others realize that they’re married to exceptional men who should have a lot of children--and she doesn’t want to be the one to bear them.”

The donors are not paid and presumably participate out of flattery or because they share Graham’s philosophy. None would agree to be interviewed for this story.

Graham also makes no money from the venture. In fact, because he absorbs the cost of finding donors and having them and their sperm tested, his operation loses money, he said. The repository charges only shipping costs--$50 to $100, although Graham says he plans to raise the price soon to cover some of the testing.

Graham says he would like more than his current stable of 13 donors. But among his limited offerings, the women say, they find the pickings good and are sometimes flustered by the array of options before them, said Neva Asbury, who directs the repository’s daily operations.

“Sometimes a woman will call me and say, ‘Tell me something that’s not on the description list that will help me make up my mind.’

“And I may say, ‘I’ve met one of the donors in the office, and he’s really warm, or bubbly, or he’s got great legs,’ and that will settle it,” Asbury said.