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

The EU considers tightening bans on compensating donors of Substances of Human Origin (SoHO)

 Peter Jaworski considers an  EU proposal this month to harmonize across the EU bans on paying donors for Substances of Human Origin (SoHO).  Presently Germany, Austria and Chechia allow payment to plasma donors.

The E.U. Doesn't Want People To Sell Their Plasma, and It Doesn't Care How Many Patients That Hurts. The United States currently supplies about 70 percent of the plasma used to manufacture therapies for the entire world.  by PETER JAWORSKI 

"The European Union looks like it might take the foolish step of banning financial incentives for a variety of substances of human origin, including blood, blood plasma, sperm, and breast milk. The legislation on the safety and quality of Substances of Human Origin includes an approved amendment that says donors can only be compensated for "quantifiable losses" and that such donations are to be "financially neutral." This legislation is supposed to harmonize the rules across the 27 member countries, promote safety, with the ban on financial incentives intended to avoid commodification and the exploitation of the poor. 

...

"Already the E.U. is dependent on plasma collected in the United States for around 40 percent of the needs of its 300,000 rare disease patients. They're not as dependent as Canada because Germany, Austria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic allow a flat-fee donor compensation model and so are able to have surplus collections that contribute 56 percent of the E.U. total. The remaining 23 countries, each of which runs a plasma collection deficit, manage just 44 percent. 

"So what is likely to happen if the new rules make this flat-fee donor compensation model illegal? Will safety improve and commodification and exploitation be avoided? No, the E.U. will just become even more dependent on the United States."

The end of anonymous sperm donation...

 In  Colorado, a new law ending anonymous sperm donation seeks to catch up with the technological developments involving genetic sequencing that have already made anonymity of sperm or egg donors fairly fragile. Here's an account in JAMA:

The End of Anonymous Sperm Donation in Colorado--A Step Forward to a New Fertility Future in the US?  by I. Glenn Cohen, JD1; Eli Y. Adashi, MD, MS2; Seema Mohapatra, JD, MPH3   JAMA. Published online October 24, 2022. doi:10.1001/jama.2022.19471

"On May 31, 2022, Colorado became the first state to effectively ban anonymous gamete donation.1 Starting in 2025, fertility clinics in Colorado must collect identity and medical information from sperm and egg donors and may not match donors that do not agree to such disclosure (the statute uses the word “donor” though in many instances compensation is provided). The new law also requires that the clinics make a request that donors update their contact information and medical history at least once every 3 years. The law provides that a donor-conceived person aged 18 years or older shall be provided donor information upon request. The statute purports to also prohibit fertility clinics outside Colorado from providing gametes to Colorado residents (or individuals located in Colorado) if they do not abide by these rules. The statute also instructs clinics not to match a donor once it is known or reasonably should be known that “25 families have been established using a single donor in or outside of Colorado.”1

...

"Two states, Utah and Washington, have enacted statutes requiring the collecting and sharing of identifying information about a donor with donor-conceived children who request it after reaching the age of 18 years.3 However, both states also permit a donor to opt out, thereby limiting the utility of the laws. By contrast, the UK, Germany, Sweden, France, and many other countries have created mandatory registries that donor-conceived individuals can access when they turn 18 years of age, having an effect similar to the new Colorado law.3,4

"The new Colorado law highlights the gap between the law and reality of gamete donor anonymity in the US outside Colorado. Banks have promised donors anonymity in other US states and prior leaks of donor information from banks’ files have been exceedingly rare, if they ever happened at all; the banks have litigated to protect the identifying information provided by the donor.3 But in a practical sense, the promise of anonymity is now much less thoroughgoing.4 Direct-to-consumer genetic testing has become very common, and it has been estimated that 100 million people worldwide have taken a direct-to-consumer genetic test by 2021.4 Studies estimate that a genetic database covering only 2% of the population could match nearly anyone in that population.4 The combination of direct-to-consumer genetic testing, publicly available information, and social media suggest that many donor-conceived individuals will in fact be able to reidentify their gamete donor."

Deceased donor sperm recovery and conception

I guess it's a case of deceased donor transplantation of sorts. Above the Law has the story:

Posthumous Conception: It Happens More Often Than You Think by Ellen Trachman

 "In the latest high-profile controversy over posthumous conception, last month, we learned of the birth of a baby girl to an Australian woman named Ellidy Pullin, the widow of Olympic snowboarder Alex “Chumpy” Pullin. The Olympian died tragically in a diving accident in 2020.

"Ellidy Pullin turned to their fertility doctor, Andrew Davidson, and asked that her spouse’s sperm be harvested from his body after his death. Davidson described how he entered fertility medicine never expecting to do posthumous sperm retrievals, but now, those requests are becoming more common. The doctor noted that he has done two other posthumous sperm retrievals since the Olympian’s death.

"The process was successful for Pullin — as Davidson notes, it usually is, so long as the sperm is successfully retrieved within 48 hours of death.

...

"In the United States, the hospital itself is the most frequent obstacle that prevents a surviving loved one from having a chance to conceive with the DNA of their deceased spouse or partner. Many hospitals are unwilling to permit the retrieval of reproductive material without specific written consent. And by specific consent, that frequently means not just that the deceased wanted to have children with the survivor. The bar is often set higher. The consent must be that the deceased specifically agreed for their sperm or eggs to be harvested and used for reproductive purposes after their death."

Another pandemic shortage: donor sperm

 Sperm from conventional sperm banks is now in short supply. But there are "known donor" peer to peer websites and Facebook groups for direct donation, without a sperm bank:

The NY Times has the story:

The Sperm Kings Have a Problem: Too Much Demand  By Nellie Bowles

"Many people want a pandemic baby, but some sperm banks are running low. So women are joining unregulated Facebook groups to find willing donors, no middleman required.

...

"“We’ve been breaking records for sales since June worldwide not just in the U.S. — we’ve broken our records for England, Australia and Canada,” said Angelo Allard, the compliance supervisor of Seattle Sperm Bank, one of the country’s biggest sperm banks. He said his company was selling 20 percent more sperm now than a year earlier, even as supplies dwindled.

...

"Michelle Ottey, director of operations at Fairfax Cryobank, another large sperm bank, said demand was up for access to its catalog for online sperm shopping because “people are seeing that there is the possibility of more flexibility in their lives and work.”

...

"About 20 percent of sperm bank clients are heterosexual couples, 60 percent are gay women, and 20 percent are single moms by choice, the banks said.

...

"Each vial from a premium bank can cost up to $1,100. The bank guarantees a vial will have 10 million or 15 million total motile sperm. Each month, during ovulation, a prospective mother (or her doctor) unthaws a vial and injects the sperm.

"The recommendation is to buy four or five vials per desired child, since it can easily take a few months of trying to get pregnant. And since donors sell out fast, if a woman wants two children with the same donor, she needs to be ready with about $10,000.

...

"Apps for finding donors, like Modamily and Just a Baby, popped up. So did Known Donor Registry, where some 50,000 members arrange the giving and receiving of sperm. Facebook groups with tens of thousands of members — where men will post pictures of themselves, often with their own children — began advertising themselves to interested parties.

...

"The legal risk for both parties — risk that a mother will ask the donor for child support, and risk that a donor will want custody — is high, and the laws around this are not consistent in every state. The women who turn to Facebook groups for sperm tend to be unable to afford traditional sperm banks.

Should deceased donors be allowed to donate sperm?

Deceased donor sperm donation is the subject of an article earlier this year, in light of the shortage of donated sperm in the UK:

Hodson N, Parker J. "The ethical case for non-directed postmortem sperm donation,"
Journal of Medical Ethics 2020;46:489-492.

Abstract: In this article we outline and defend the concept of voluntary non-directed postmortem sperm donation. This approach offers a potential means of increasing the quantity and heterogeneity of donor sperm. This is pertinent given the present context of a donor sperm shortage in the UK. Beyond making the case that it is technically feasible for dead men to donate their sperm for use in reproduction, we argue that this is ethically permissible. The inability to access donor sperm and the suffering this causes, we argue, justifies allowing access to sperm donated after death. Moreover, it is known that individuals and couples have desires for certain sperm donor characteristics which may not be fulfilled when numbers of sperm donors are low. Enacting these preferences contributes significantly to the well-being of intended parents, so we argue that this provides a pro tanto reason for respecting them. Finally, we explore the benefits and possible disadvantages of such a system for the various parties affected.

"The United Kingdom (UK) has a shortage of donor sperm. In 2016 there were 2273 donor insemination treatment cycles; 42% of the women registering had a male partner, 41% had a female partner and 17% were single.1 The average number of newly registered sperm donors per year between 2011 and 2013 was 586, an increase from 2004 where there were 237 donors.2 Yet this increase includes donations for specific use by a known individual to create one offspring. In 2016 the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) reported 4306 in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment cycles with ‘own eggs and donor sperm’ and 924 treatment cycles with ‘donor egg and donor sperm’.1 Clearly there is high demand for donor sperm and HFEA reports demonstrate this is increasing.1

"Commercial imports have been the mainstay of UK efforts to keep up with increasing demand for donor sperm.1 The Department of Health and Social Care estimates that 4000 samples were imported from the USA and 3000 from Denmark in addition to samples from other European Union (EU) countries.3 The HFEA highlights that imports are used to plug the gap because "the cost, time and resources required to recruit donors themselves is too high when there are specialist sperm banks who can carry out an efficient and reliable service".4 The Department of Health and Social Care has raised concerns that the UK's departure from the EU may worsen this state of affairs.3
...
"There are barriers to donating sperm in life that may prevent some men acting on their desire to help others or see their genes continue into future generations through donation. Posthumous sperm donation avoids most of these problems, allowing men to access the positives of sperm donation without the drawbacks. Living kidney donation provides an informative comparison between the motivations to donate in life versus after death. It is difficult to overestimate the value of donated kidneys to those individuals on the transplant list. Many people feel the pull of altruism and have a desire to help those who need a kidney transplant. Yet the potential costs of donating during life mean that individuals would rather donate after death when those costs are eliminated.16 Gamete donation after death parallels kidney donation by offering the same benefits as donation in life with fewer drawbacks, thereby both incentivising men to donate and providing greater opportunity to fulfil some of their reproductive and altruistic desires. This makes voluntary postmortem sperm donation an attractive addition to living donation.
...
"Given the potential impact of postmortem sperm donation on the family, policy decisions could be used to soften the implications of postmortem sperm donation for the family. For our purposes, the important point is that considerations of the family, including a romantic partner surviving the deceased man, do not justify a blanket ban on the use of sperm collected after death, especially if the donor has specified a desire to donate.
...
"The UK consensus is that gametes ought not to be bought although donor expenses should be covered.37 We do not take a view on this generally, but note the dissonance generated when sperm from countries such as Denmark where ‘vendors’ have been paid is used in the UK.38 In so far as society benefits from a coherent bioethical policy reflecting its shared values, using dead donors rather than donors who were paid in other countries to bolster supplies might provide a more coherent policy.

Different misconduct in sperm donation

One reason it is rewarding to study unregulated markets is that it gives you some idea of why some regulation might be desirable.  The growth in DNA registries has allowed many children of sperm donors to identify their biological father, and it also allows donors to identify their children, sometimes with unsettling results.

Here's a story from the Washington Post:

Sperm donor says fertility clinic ‘lied’ after discovering he fathered 17 kids ― most in the same area

"It was 1989 when he gave his sperm to the fertility clinic at Oregon Health & Science University, where he was a first-year medical student, believing his donation would help infertile couples and advance science. The facility promised that once his sperm had conceived five babies in mothers living on the East Coast, the rest would be used for research, Cleary said at a Wednesday news conference. He had assured his wife that the donor kids were far enough away that their own four children could never run into them in their Oregon town, or unwittingly befriend them or fall in love with them.

“So you can imagine his shock,” his attorney Chris Best said at the news conference, “when, after 30 years, Dr. Cleary recently [learned] that no less than 17 children have been born from his donations” ― all of whom were born in the state of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest."

DNA tests are revealing medical misconduct in early sperm donation

The NY Times has the story, summarizing many recently discovered cases in which fertility doctors used their own sperm in place of other sperm donors:

Their Mothers Chose Donor Sperm. The Doctors Used Their Own.
Scores of people born through artificial insemination have learned from DNA tests that their biological fathers were the doctors who performed the procedure.

"With the advent of widespread consumer DNA testing, instances in which fertility specialists decades ago secretly used their own sperm for artificial insemination have begun to surface with some regularity. Three states have now passed laws criminalizing this conduct, including Texas, which now defines it as a form of sexual assault.

"Dr. Jody Madeira, a law professor at Indiana University, is following more than 20 cases in the United States and abroad. They have occurred in a dozen states, including Connecticut, Vermont, Idaho, Utah and Nevada, she said, as well as in England, South Africa, Germany and the Netherlands."
**********

There's an old saying that good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.  The same thing might be said about well regulated markets...

Sperm selection

I've blogged before about selection of sperm donors, but here's a story from the NY Times about the selection of sperm itself:

Tinder for Sperm: Even in the Petri Dish, Looks and Athleticism Are Prized
What makes one sperm cell — a blob of DNA with a tail — stand out? The selection process is like a microscopic Mr. America contest.
By Randi Hutter Epstein

“Not that one with the droopy head,” Lo said, pointing to a sperm that looked like a deflated balloon sagging over its string. He rejected a sperm with a thickened midpiece that he described as a “turtleneck,” and said he also avoids sperm with curlicue tails or an extra tail. Slow pokes and non-swimmers are spurned as well.

...
"When a sperm cell reaches the egg, it releases hyaluronidase, an enzyme that dissolves the cumulus, a layer of cells surrounding the egg. Next, the acrosome, a vesicle inside the sperm cell’s head, fuses with the outer layer of the egg, igniting the release of enzymes that ease the route inside. The sperm’s vigorously waving tail provides an extra push to help it through. Once inside, proteins within the sperm cell’s head prompt the oocyte to finish maturing and to release chemicals that harden the outer shell of the egg, preventing other sperm from barging in.

"These days, many leading fertility centers use techniques that allow them to bypass all these steps. Instead, they pick a single sperm and inject it into the egg, a technique called intracytoplasmic sperm injection or ICSI (pronounced ICK-see). ICSI was designed to help men with few or defective sperm, but has become so common that it’s used in more than half* of all I.V.F. procedures.
...
"In addition to having a keen eye for promising sperm, an embryologist must have excellent hand-eye coordination. Even then, learning to identify and successfully catch a single sperm before it swims away can take months of practice, said Lo. “I told my parents those years of video game playing, they’ve really paid off.”

* From The Lancet: "Globally, between 2008 and 2010, more than 4·7 million treatment cycles of assisted reproduction techniques were performed, of which around half involved intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), leading to the birth of 1·14 million babies.

Sperm donors used to be anonymous. Technology has made that obsolete

Here's a representative story from the NY Times:

Sperm Donors Can’t Stay Secret Anymore. Here’s What That Means.  By Susan Dominus

"To be the biological child of an anonymous sperm donor today is to live in a state of perpetual anticipation. Having never imagined a world in which donors could be tracked down by DNA, in their early years sperm banks did not limit the number of families to whom one donor’s sperm would be sold — means that many of the children conceived have half-siblings in the dozens. There are hundreds of biological half-sibling groups that number more than 20, according to the Donor Sibling Registry, where siblings can find one another, using their donor number. Groups larger than 100, the registry reports, are far from rare.
"Because of the increasing popularity of genetic testing sites like 23andMe, in the past two or three years a whole new category of people, including those who never knew they were conceived via donor insemination, are reaching out to half siblings who may have already connected with others in their extended biological family. 
...
"Over time the adoption movement popularized the principle that individuals had a right to know their biological roots, and lesbian couples and single mothers, dominating ever more of the sperm banks’ market, called for greater transparency. In the early 2000s, California Cryobank offered, for a premium fee, an option for parents to choose a donor who agreed not just to be contacted when the offspring turned 18 but to respond in some fashion (though still anonymously if that was his preference).

By 2010, experts in reproductive technology were starting to note that internet searchability, facial-recognition software and the future of DNA testing would soon render anonymity a promise that the sperm banks could no longer keep. Since 2017, California Cryobank has stopped offering anonymity to its new donors. Donors now must agree to reveal their names to their offspring when they turn 18 and to have some form of communication to be mediated, at first, by the bank."

************

And here's an accompanying story, by a man who has now met and photographed many of his half-sibs.

A Family Portrait: Brothers, Sisters, Strangers

Photo essay by Eli Baden-Lasar

Text by Eli Baden-Lasar as told to Susan Dominus

In Britain, National Sperm Bank stops recruiting donors

The Telegraph has the story: National Sperm Bank stops recruiting donors after just two years

"The National Sperm Bank (NSB) was a joint project run by the National Gamete Donation Trust (NGDT) and the Birmingham Women’s Fertility Centre and launched in October 2014 with a £77,000 grant from the Department of Health.

It was hoped the service would plug the gap in the shortage of donors and prevent couples being forced to look for sperm from overseas.

The bank hoped to be self-sufficient within a year but because the full donor process takes up to 18 months they were unable to generate enough income to keep going.

Although they only managed to recruit seven viable donors, experts said it was the business model that proved their ultimate downfall.

...

"“For every 100 men who enquire about being a donor, only 4 or 5 are ultimately accepted.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority estimate that 2,000 children are born every year in the UK using donated eggs, sperm or embryos and there are around licensed UK clinics performing sperm donor insemination.

But the majority of clinics are based in London and the south-east of England and treatment can be expensive. The cost of donor sperm from the UK's largest sperm bank, the London Sperm Bank, is currently £950. In contrast the National Sperm bank was proposing to charge £300 per insemination.

...

"The bank has also suffered because since 2005 the children of donors have a right to learn the identity of their fathers when they turn 18. The numbers of men willing to donate sperm has fallen dramatically since their anonymity was removed."

Danish sperm donors and British babies

The Telegraph has the story: Invasion of the Viking babies--With a growing demand for donor fathers, women are turning to Danish sperm banks

"Donors are paid a similar sum in Britain, but clinics can’t recruit enough men to keep up with the growing demand for sperm (the number of women with female partners having donor insemination, for example, rose by 23 per cent between 2010 and 2011). The percentage of new registered donors from overseas has more than doubled in recent years, from 11 to 24 per cent – and around a third of those imports are from Denmark.

“It’s a bit like the Viking invasion of 800AD,” says Dr Allan Pacey, a fertility expert from the University of Sheffield and current chairman of the British Fertility Society. “They’ve invaded us once by boat, and now they’re doing it by sperm.”

"Part of the problem is down to our system, with donor recruitment generally carried out on a small scale in British fertility clinics. On average, just one in every 20 men who applies will be suitable to donate. Men do not only need to have high-quality sperm: they also have to undergo a full range of screening tests for genetically inherited diseases and sexually transmitted infections, and their family medical histories must be assessed. Those deemed suitable will need to commit to regular visits to the clinic, usually during the working day. It’s often easier for a clinic to suggest their clients use a Danish donor, where a specialist sperm bank has the resources to devote to finding the 5 per cent who fit the bill.

"Although some bigger fertility clinics here do have a ready supply of donors, inter-clinic competition means that those who don’t tend to recommend an overseas sperm bank. Olivia Montuschi, of the Donor Conception Network, a charity for those affected by donor conception, told me that patients are not being informed about the clinics that have donors available. “Clinics like to retain their own patients, not share them, and they keep information about donors at other clinics to themselves,” she says.

When does sperm donation equal paternity?

There are lots of issues to be settled about transactions related to reproduction, such as surrogacy, and egg and sperm donation. Some of these are illustrated by a case going through both the courts and the media in California. Here's the NY Times story: Does ‘Sperm Donor’ Mean ‘Dad’?

Here's a relevant paragraph about the existing laws:

"California, like many states, according to Professor Cahn, has conflicting statutes. One provides that any man can establish parentage if he “receives the child into his home and openly holds the child out as his natural child.” But another statute holds that a man who provides his sperm to a doctor for the purpose of inseminating an unmarried friend is “treated as if he were not the natural father” — unless there is a specific written agreement ahead of conception."

Law and economics of repugnant markets

Kimberly Krawiec at The Faculty Lounge, some time ago followed up on one of my posts with an interesting one of her own: Selecting for Sex: US entrepreneurship in the baby market

She is a professor at Duke Law, and a scholar of repugnant markets, often analysing them with respect to rent seeking behavior. See e.g.

Altruism and Intermediation in the Market for Babies, 66 WASH. & LEE L. REV. 203 (2009).
Abstract: Central to every legal system is the principle that certain items are off-limits to commercial exchange. In theory, babies are one such sacred object. This supposed ban on baby selling has been lamented by those who view commercial markets as the most efficient means of allocating resources, and defended by those who contend that commercial markets in parental rights commodify human beings, compromise individual dignity, or jeopardize fundamental values. However, the supposed and much-discussed baby selling ban does not, and is not intended to, eliminate commercial transactions in children. Instead, it is an asymmetric legal restriction that limits the ability of baby market suppliers to share in the full profits generated by their reproductive labor, insisting instead that they derive a large portion of their compensation from the utility associated with altruistic donation. Meanwhile, a wide range of baby market intermediaries profit handsomely in the baby market, without similar restrictions on their market activities. Baby selling "bans" thus have more in common with the rent-seeking by powerful marketplace actors seen in other commercial markets than with normative statements about the sanctity of human life. The author concludes with a call for the removal of the last vestiges of the "ban" against baby selling and other laws that diminish the capacity of baby market suppliers to access the marketplace.

Price and Pretense in the Baby Market, in BABY MARKETS: MONEY, MORALS, AND THE NEOPOLITICS OF CHOICE (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2009).

Show Me the Money: Making Markets in Forbidden Exchange, 72 LAW & CONTEMP. PROBS. (2009).

Sunny Samaritans and Egomaniacs: Price-Fixing in the Gamete Market, 72 LAW & CONTEMP. PROBS._ (2009).
Abstract: This Article considers the market structure of the human egg (or “oocyte”) donation business, particularly the presence of anti-competitive behavior by the fertility industry, including horizontal price-fixing of the type long considered per se illegal in other industries. The Article explores why this attempted collusion has failed to generate the same public and regulatory concern prompted by similar behavior in other industries, arguing that the persistent dialogue of gift-giving and altruistic donation obscures both the highly commercial nature of egg “donation” and the benefits to the fertility industry of controlling the price of a necessary input into many fertility services – namely, eggs. A comparison to the egg market’s closest cousin – the sperm market – does not reveal similar collusive attempts to depress the price of sperm. A further analysis of the industry explores potential reasons for this difference.

The last two articles appear in an edited online journal volume by Professor Krawiec, called Show Me the Money: Making Markets in Forbidden Exchange, which has articles on the sale of blood, organs, eggs and sperm, labor, and surrogate wombs: here's her blog post summarizing them.

Miscellaneous repugnant transactions

Germany to ban paintball
"The German government is planning to ban paintball and laser shooting games in reaction to the recent school massacre in which 15 people died.
Under legislation agreed by the ruling coalition of the chancellor, Angela ­Merkel, using air rifles to shoot paint-filled pellets at opponents is likely to be made illegal, and would be punishable with fines of up to €5,000 " (HT Muriel Niederle)

Over at Knowledge Problem: Price gouging: Is it wrong? Should it be against the law?

At MR, Tyler Cowen reports:"Love Land, a sex theme park set to open this October in China won't have the chance to lose it's virginity. Chinese bureaucrats ordered the park destroyed after details of the park's featured attractions were leaked.
The story is here. The rest of the article relates:
The park was to have giant-sized reproductions of male and female anatomy, and offered lessons in safe sex and the proper use of condoms. There was also an exhibition about the history of sex, as well as workshops offering sex techniques.
The entrance to park featured a giant pair of women's legs clad only in a red thong. Those legs are now closed forever. Officials would only say that the concept of the park was vulgar, and deemed unnecessary. Bulldozers and wrecking ball were seen destroying the exhibits as onlookers tried to get a peak.
China considers the topic of sex taboo, even though illegal prostitution is at an all-time high in the country. "

Fertility treatments in Britain: a post actually headlined Repugnant Transactions follows a story in the Guardian, Thousands of women leaving UK for fertility treatment, • Women losing patience with NHS waiting lists • Eggs and donated sperm in short supply, study says.
"Couples here are able to exploit the fact that, in some countries, women who choose to donate eggs can be paid, said Culley, with some donors in America receiving up to $10,000. In Britain, by contrast, tight regulation of fertility means egg donors receive only expenses.
"All the evidence is that cross-border reproductive care is growing. Women here do this for all sorts of reasons," she said. "There is a serious shortage of eggs, donated sperm is in shorter supply than before, the cost can be cheaper abroad and some people want IVF which they can't get on the NHS."
...
"Isobel O'Neill, a fertility counsellor in Glasgow, said couples seeking a donated egg who visit the Glasgow Royal Infirmary are told there is a six- or seven-year wait for one on the NHS. Even those willing to pay at the private Glasgow Centre for Reproductive Medicine, where she also works, face a delay of up to a year."

California High Court Upholds Gay Marriage Ban
"The California Supreme Court upheld a ban on same-sex marriage Tuesday, ratifying a decision made by voters last year. The ruling comes at a time when several state governments have moved in the opposite direction.
"The court’s decision does, however, preserve the 18,000 same-sex marriages performed between the justices’ ruling last May that same-sex marriage was constitutionally protected and voters’ passage in November of Proposition 8, which banned it.
The court’s opinion, written by Chief Justice Ronald M. George for a 6-to-1 majority, noted that same-sex couples still had a right to civil unions. Such unions, the opinion said, gives those couples the ability to “choose one’s life partner and enter with that person into a committed, officially recognized and protected family relationship that enjoys all of the constitutionally based incidents of marriage.”
Justice George wrote that Proposition 8 did not “entirely repeal or abrogate” the right to such a protected relationship. Instead, he said, it “carves out a narrow and limited exception to these state constitutional rights, reserving the official designation of the term ‘marriage’ for the union of opposite-sex couples as a matter of state constitutional law.”
The 18,000 existing marriages can stand, he wrote, because Proposition 8 did not include language specifically saying it was retroactive."

Update, hugging: Jorge Ortiz directs my attention to a story in today's NY Times that I had overlooked, some high schools are banning hugs:
"And schools from Hillsdale, N.J., to Bend, Ore., wary in a litigious era about sexual harassment or improper touching — or citing hallway clogging and late arrivals to class — have banned hugging or imposed a three-second rule. "

An innovative early paper on repugnance: Ravi Kanbur, "On Obnoxious Markets", July 2001. Revised version published in Stephen Cullenberg and Prasanta Pattanaik (editors), Globalization, Culture and the Limits of the Market: Essays in Economics and Philosophy. Oxford University Press, 2004.
Professor Kanbur argues that extreme outcomes, and asymmetric and inadequate information, and inequality are big components in making markets obnoxious, and I agree.

I'm personally reluctant to set out a theory of what makes markets repugnant since I always find markets that don't fit into any simple framework. Same-sex marriage, for example, is a transaction that many people find repugnant (and is now once again illegal in California, see above), but it is no more extreme, or subject to asymmetric information, or unequal than heterosexual marriage, which is just about the opposite of a repugnant transaction, what we might call a "protected" transaction.

Market for eggs and sperm

The Boston Globe reports Recession spurs egg and sperm donations
Giving provides extra income.

"Couples, and some single women, pay $20,000 to $30,000 for an egg donation, in vitro fertilization, and transfer to the recipient. Donors generally must be healthy nonsmokers between ages 21 and 32 with a good family health history, "reasonably educated and reasonably attractive," Benardo said. Screening involves physical, psychological, and genetic testing. If accepted, the woman undergoes hormone injections, then a surgical procedure to remove her eggs. Fees paid to the donor generally range from $5,000 to $10,000. Recipients choose prescreened donors."
...
"In Charlestown, NEEDS (National Exchange for Egg Donation and Surrogacy) also reports a 25 percent increase. "Very few of them will say just straight out it's for the money," said NEEDS manager Jan Lee. "They don't want to sound like a money-grabber. We ask them if they're applying because they need the money or out of the goodness of their heart, and they say both." "
...
"[Dr. Vito Cardone, founder of Cardone Reproductive Medicine & Infertility] cautions against women seeing this as a gold mine.
"The money that's given is limited; it's not going to be something to create a yearly revenue to get them through life," he said.
He believes in compensating women for their time and trouble but said there needs to be "some ethics to it" - both an altruistic motive and a monetary limit.
"When I see people who want to 'sell' their eggs for $20,000 or more it makes no sense, because then it becomes commercial, like selling any other thing," he said. "There has to be a little bit of kindness, because these couples have had a lot of hardship and desire a child very strongly." "
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" Sperm donations are also on the increase, although they pay much less - an average of $85 to $100 per donation. Such "banks" generally require that the donor be at least 5-foot-8, a college student or graduate between the ages of 18 and 38, and in good health.
California Cryobank, which has offices in Cambridge, recruits largely on college campuses and asks each donor for a year's commitment, with the average donor contributing 2-3 times a week.
In the past six months, applications are up 20 percent, said Scott Brown, communications manager. "I think the recession has certainly opened up interest," he said. But less than 1 percent of applicants are chosen, based on family history, a physical exam, and analyses of blood, urine, and semen. "It's tougher to get into the Cryobank than into Harvard," Brown said."