Sperm donation from Denmark to the UK and elsewhere

 The Daily Mail has the story:

'They invaded us once by boat and now they're doing it with sperm!' Why hundreds of British women are giving birth to 'Viking babies' conceived with Danish donors

"These are the main Danish export products - beer, Lego and sperm!"'

"So why are so many British women going Danish? According to Dr Alan Pacey, a fertility expert at the University of Sheffield, one of the reasons is a shortage of homegrown sperm.

'We don't have enough donors in the UK to meet the national need,' he explains. 'We don't have the clinic infrastructure sufficient to recruit enough donors - even when men want to donate.

...

"'The NHS is used to treating patients and you get a fee for treating patients. You don't get a fee for screening a donor that you may not ultimately accept.'

"Compounding the problem for British clinics is the 2005 law that forces men to waive their anonymity, meaning sperm donors face the prospect of offspring turning up on their doorstep once they reach the age of 18.

"Nevertheless, although Danish clinics, among them the world's largest sperm bank, Cryos, cannot sell semen from anonymous donors to British women, business is booming thanks to the huge numbers of local men happy to sign up anyway.

...

"Experts such as Laura Witjens, CEO of the National Gamete Donation Trust, say the excellent customer service deployed by Copenhagen's sperm banks has also contributed to the Viking baby boom.

'It's much easier for a British clinic to order sperm from Denmark which is Fed-exed the next day than to try and recruit their own donors and all the hassle that goes with them,' says Witjens.

'The Danish model is customer service driven. It knows how to deal well with customers, it has a good website, and that's what we could do in the UK as well - it's not rocket science.'

HT: Mario Macis