25 Years Ago: A Bank Selling Sperm from Nobel Laureates and Olympic Champions – Where Are the Children Today?
Rober Graham, a millionaire who greatly admired scientists, established a famous sperm bank across the United States: The Sperm Bank of Nobel Laureates. He persistently reached out to the most renowned scientists of the time through letters, phone calls, and even surprise visits to their laboratories, all to collect their sperm in sterilized tubes. Graham convinced these individuals that they held the fate of humanity in their hands: “Humans must control the process of evolution.” He believed that impoverished, sick, and intellectually disabled individuals often had many children, leading humanity back to its intellectual starting point. According to Graham, “intellectual selection” was the only way to avoid this regression.
From Graham’s bank, 215 children were born before it closed in 1999. David Plotz, an American journalist for the online magazine Slate, investigated what happened to these children with “super genes” and managed to find 30 of them. Plotz, who referred to himself as a “sperm detective,” also interviewed several sperm donors from the past. In his newly published book on this topic, Plotz addresses one of the biggest questions in science: How much power lies within genes, and what percentage of personality is shaped by environment and education?
How Much Power Lies in Genetic Material?
Initially, Plotz reaches a modest conclusion: among the sperm donors, only three were Nobel laureates, including Professor William Shockley, the inventor of the transistor. However, the “genetic material” from these three scientists was so poor that none of their sperm samples were able to fertilize an egg.
Graham collected sperm not just from established scientists, but also from young, rising stars, Olympic champions, and self-made millionaires. Among the children born from his bank, there were some promising cases. Plotz met the mother of Joy, whose genetic father was referred to as “Donor White,” and records indicated he was an outstanding young scientist. Plotz even traced down this genetic father and confirmed that he is now a well-known scientist. Joy’s biological father has a 13-year-old daughter who is an intelligent girl, always at the top of her class. She is also a talented young ballet dancer with long legs and a very poised, confident demeanor. Plotz noted that Joy is the kind of daughter teachers love and parents dream of having.
Lorraine, a neurologist, has three brilliant children. Her 10-year-old son and two 6-year-old twins attend the best schools and consistently bring home the highest grades. She mentioned they are so wonderful that everyone around them competes to care for them. Lorraine decided to have children through the sperm bank because, in her daily work, she constantly faced cases of intellectual disabilities. She believes the desire to have “elite” children is completely normal because “every gardener must choose good seeds.”
But does Lorraine’s children’s intelligence derive from the “superior genetic material” she used?
Plotz is skeptical of that hypothesis. He cites the example of two boys, Tom and Alton. They are half-brothers but do not know it. Both were conceived using the sperm of “Donor Coral,” a top-quality sperm donor whose profile read: “Outstanding scientist, IQ over 160, plays chess, piano, loves children.” This should have been enough for both Tom and Alton to become leaders in their generation. However, the reality is that the two boys developed completely differently.
Alton grew up in a suburb of Boston. He attended a prestigious school and always received the highest grades. He is an excellent pianist and a talented dancer. A statue he created was displayed at a talent exhibition for children at Harvard University. Alton is a persistent, confident, and ambitious child. When his mother told him about his biological father, he calmly accepted the truth.
Tom, however, is quite different. He is an unstable child who grew up in a mediocre neighborhood in a city in the western United States. He attended a rather average school and brought home average grades. Instead of playing the piano, he sang dry songs in a rap band. His mother kept the identity of his biological father a secret. When Tom announced his intention to drop out of school to pursue wrestling (a very violent sport), his mother had to reveal to him that he carried the gene of intelligence, hoping he would abandon that crazy idea. However, the truth about his biological father only deepened his ongoing identity crisis. In despair, he set out to find his father and ended up becoming a father himself. At just 17, he got a Russian girl pregnant who had fled to America. Tom struggled under the burden of the “smart gene.” He was supposed to be a good student, smart enough to match his biological father’s IQ of over 160, right? The pressure to live up to his genetic background was alleviated when Tom finally met his biological father. Plotz and the Russian girl accompanied Tom and the newborn child to Miami, where the search for his father culminated in a shabby shack where Tom’s biological father lived among low-grade Mexican drug dealers.
“Donor Coral,” whose real name is Jeremy, still looks quite dapper for someone in their late 40s or early 50s. However, the characteristic described in his profile as “loves children” seems limited to merely creating offspring; he is the father of over a dozen children with just as many women. Additionally, he has fathered over 20 children through the sperm bank! Investigations revealed that Jeremy’s parents were not as intellectually gifted as described in the profile. His father was not an oceanographer, and his sister had never won a piano award. Jeremy himself had never participated in an IQ test. Therefore, Alton could not have inherited his piano talent from Jeremy. It can be said that he developed completely independent of his father’s genetic influence.
Among the children born from the sperm bank that Plotz found, most have succeeded in school. Some even possess talents in sports and music.
Is Parental Awareness the Key to Talent?
 |
Doron Blake at 17. |
Plotz does not believe that the children’s talents stem from the genetic material obtained through the sperm bank. He argues that the primary reason lies within the customers seeking sperm at Graham’s bank! Most of them are ambitious, dynamic women wanting to shorten the search for an optimal partner to contribute genetic material. Plotz also noticed an intriguing genetic characteristic: these children often resemble their mothers more than their fathers.
It is certain that Robert Graham’s enormous experiment has failed. Even the child who seemed most aligned with his expectations did not develop “as planned.” Doron Blake is now 23 years old. By age 2, he was sitting at a computer, quoting from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and by age 5, he achieved an IQ of 180. Both his mother and Graham capitalized on his talents: his mother saw him as a source of income, while Graham viewed him as an ideal advertising symbol. In front of countless television cameras, they presented him as an icon of the sperm bank. Doron Blake, who later became a special but lonely individual, exclaimed: “I feel like I’m always being scrutinized, interrogated.”
While Graham hoped the sperm bank children would study computer science to develop the world, Doron Blake chose to study comparative religious theory! He removed math and physics from his curriculum. Plotz remarked: “It seems he is deliberately avoiding his own intelligence.”
A New World (according to Spiegel)
