Questions to Ask the Doctor
No federal guidelines and only a few state laws regulate sperm banks and artificial insemination. But there are industry guidelines in place that couples should know about, and there are questions they should ask.
“I would recommend that people stay away from private physicians who are doing this unless they know that the doctor is only using certified sperm banks to get their products,” said Charles Inlander of People’s Medical Society, the country’s largest nonprofit patients’ rights group.
Couples should review a doctor’s or clinic’s testing and record-keeping procedures and demand to see donor medical records, which can be shared if the donor’s identity is protected.
The American Fertility Society and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that doctors and sperm banks:
* Use only frozen donor semen.
* Test donors twice, at three-month intervals, for HIV and quarantine frozen semen for six months. A man recently infected may not develop antibodies for at least three months and can transmit the virus while harboring it.
* Obtain detailed medical and genetic histories from donors.
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