Post date: Sep 22, 2011 7:4:40 PM
With the world's biggest sperm bank full, redheaded and other blond men are being rejected as donors because the demand for red and fair haired children is so low.
AARHUS, DENMARK (SEPTEMBER 22, 2011) REUTERS - The world's biggest sperm bank is full and as a consequence they have now decided not to take any sperm from redheaded and other blond men as the demand for their sperm is so low.
Director of Cryos in Denmark, Ole Schou, said the sperm bank had reached its capacity of 70 litres of semen while it had a list of around 600 potential donors.He said what they needed was brown eyed donors.
"We reject these donor candidates because we have too many. We have a waiting list of more than 600 donors now on our waiting list with these characteristics. We need is people with brown eyes and or from other ethnicities, races or from for instance southern Europe. More darker in the skin and brown eyed," he said.
As a result, Cryos has to be more selective about who can donate and have decided not to accept donations from redheaded and other blond men.
"We actually reject all typically Scandinavians unless they have brown eyes because that's what we need. We have plenty of all kinds of Scandinavians - blue eyed, green eyed, gray eyed or any mixtures of that - but we need brown eyed," Schou said.
He said sperm from redheads was used in Denmark and neighbouring Sweden but also shipped to Ireland and Germany. But outside northern Europe, he said, there was not much demand for redheads.
"We also ship a lot to Ireland and to Germany from the redhead but the problem basically is that we are located here in Scandinavia, in northern Europe, and the selection among our population in the fairer characteristics of our population doesn't reflect the demand in all these countries we supply," he said.
According to Cryos Denmark's website, it has one of the world's largest selection of sperm donors and they ship donor semen to clinics and private customers in more than 65 countries.
Schou said it was not surprising that people from countries outside northern Europe did not want blonde or redhead children.
"People always search for something similar to themselves specifically the racial and ethnic background," he said.
Schou said the company shipped sperm to every part of the world apart from Antarctica and were now planning to set up sperm banks elsewhere to cater to different wishes.