Kirk Maxey, Father Of 400 Kids, Demands Sperm Bank Regulation

By all accounts, Dr. Kirk Maxey of southeast Michigan appears to be a regular dad, attending his 12-year-old son's soccer games, leading rock-climbing excursions or grabbing some ice cream. But Maxey also happens to be one of the country's most prolific sperm donors, fathering approximately 400 children after donating his semen twice a week between 1980 and 1994. He's now pushing for stricter sperm bank regulation and mapping his genome online to inform his offspring.

George Church of Harvard's Personal Genome Project asked Maxey to be one of the first ten volunteers to have his genome mapped.

"Due to fertility-clinic policies, many donor offspring don't have complete access to medical history, and having their genome sequence might catch some predictable and actionable gene," Church told Newsweek. "Making Maxey's genome available could help people who actually want to find their father, or mothers who feel the current regulation of sperm banks is inadequate. Rather than merely beguiling with descriptions of tall, blue-eyed professionals as sperm donors, the clinics should also be checking for potential genetic tragedies."

Fortunately, Maxey seems healthy, with just a 1.9 percent increased risk for coronary heart disease, a reduced risk for Alzheimer's and a reduced risk of baldness. However, there are other potential problems, as Maxey mentioned in a 2006 interview with ABC News:

"I have a son that lives in the area and most of the patients came from a 100- or 150-mile radius of the area. If you do math, again, there may be 100 young women that are basically my son's age that are his half-siblings. I have to tell him there is an awful lot of your brothers and sisters that you don't know and I don't know."

Maxey told Newsweek that the current sperm donation system must be government-regulated. The FDA's guidelines indicate that donated sperm can't have a "relevant communicable disease agent or disease," but there is no limit on how many donations can be made by one person. Individual sperm banks can choose a maximum amount, typically between 15 and 25 vials.

Maxey said, "Statutory rules for genetics tests on donors should be part of FDA guidelines, which should also require that sperm banks follow up on the children to make sure they are healthy. All I'm really advocating for is the absolute informed consent for the mothers."

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Comments

[Subservient]

12:29 PM on 01/15/2010

What a disgusting sham. Completely vile. There are MILLIONS of starving, broken, parentless children in the world. And these sperm banks make a profit off of artificially inseminating sperm into women whose husbands bodies werent intended to produce babies. One man is the father of 400 children? How should these 400 children feel about this? I imagine they would feel rather insignificant , and not so special. I hate this garbage. If your body doesn't allow you to have children, then adopt. Or don't get a dog.

[janeycat]

12:57 AM on 01/12/2010

Sounds like he put his self through school by donating at the local bank ....

[Usama]

09:29 AM on 12/28/2009

This is both sad and hilarious. How many people in America are unknowingly mating with his/her sibling as a result of this despicable degrading practice of sperm donation?

[Tom Joad]

08:54 PM on 12/27/2009

...his genome indicates reduced risk of baldness? Is that his pic? Looks like a very high hairline to me...

[janeycat]

12:46 AM on 01/12/2010

I thought the same thing !!!

HA

[GrownupStewie]

02:59 AM on 12/26/2009

Just because he is a doctor doesnt make him smart...I know quite a few surgeons who are COMPLETE morons....im unfortunate to have an entire circle of friends who are either married to or are doctors...who would want this mans sperm?....

I think the solution to his son dating his half sister is...."so, are you the child of a possible sperm bank donation?....no? oh great, so where do you want to go for dinner?

[tallycat2]

09:39 AM on 12/26/2009

Did any of you do a google search on this guy before spouting off? I'd say he's pretty much a genius - he's a successful biotech CEO - he has patents on new medicines for heart disease, biodiesel, glaucoma, and information systems. I agree not all docs are smart - but how many of you have patented anything?
As a single mom who used a donor, I never had a choice of anyone whose actual DNA was listed in Gen Bank. There is really something nasty and irresponsible here - and it's not this doctor who's at fault. I think the jeers go mainly to the commentators.

[f0rTyLeGz]

01:28 AM on 12/26/2009

Either you have reading comprehension problems, or... you think snarkiness is a virtue.

[Tommygun264]

09:05 AM on 12/25/2009

At the very least, there should be a law requiring sperm banks to sample the DNA of all recipients so it can be cross-checked with the DNA all donors as part of the qualification process in order to guard against a woman accidentally (or otherwise) receiving sperm from a man to whom she is closely biologically related. This can be done without sacrificing the anonymity of either party. All applicants for marriage licenses should have their DNA sampled and cross-checked before their license is approved for the same reasons. Not everyone who is the product of artificial insemination using the sperm from an anonymous donor, who was separated from biological siblings or other biological relatives, or who was adopted as an infant or at an early age, is aware of their origins. While it is extremely unlikely that any two people who are closely related biologically but unaware of this fact would meet and fall in love with each other, it is not only statistically possible, but has happened. Recently a couple of newlyweds in England discovered that they were in fact twins, brother and sister, separated at birth when they were adopted by separate families. The technology to avoid such a tragedy exists and should be required by law.

[listentome]

05:04 AM on 12/25/2009

Sounds like to me that he was either a pervert or thought he found an easy way to make money. In other words, he didn't care about genetic mapping for those 14 years when he was getting paid to pleasure himself twice a week.

[Tommygun264]

07:50 AM on 12/25/2009

You consider a man "pleasuring himself" twice a week perverted? Either you are an extremely naive woman who has never had a close enough relationship with a man to discuss the subject of sex frankly, or you are an extremely repressed - possibly unbalanced - individual, regardless of your gender. As far as Dr. Maxey failing to consider the possible ramifications of his prolific donations, the responsibility lies with the distributor, not the source. Maxey just made the stuff, he didn't decide where it went or who specifically got it. Sperm banks don't normally provide either donors or recipients with the specific identities of one another, at least not without the unanimous consent of all parties involved. Without anonymity, a biological father might attempt to make contact with or even gain custody of their offspring without the recipients consent, or donors could find themselves sued for child support or even with one or more children dumped on them by recipients with buyer's remorse; and the sperm bank would be caught in the middle. It is up to the sperm bank as the go-between and only ones who know the identities of both donors and recipients to assure that their customers aren't closely related and that the number of recipients from a single donor within a given geographic area is low enough to assure a reasonably low statistical probability that two half-siblings of opposite sexes wouldn't meet.

[listentome]

02:09 PM on 12/25/2009

I am neither naive or repressed. As a matter of fact you sound naive. My point was that he was paid to jack-off and he had to have known what the possibilities were and to now, all of sudden, have pangs of conscience is ridiculous. As for Maxey just making the stuff, that is just my point also. No one made him put it in a cup and sell it. It doesn't matter if the donors lived in a one square block area or a five thousand square mile area. In the end the donor does bear some responsibility, even if it is that he didn't inquire enough about where his contribution may be going.

[pancakesandeggs]

01:44 AM on 12/25/2009

.."a reduced risk of baldness".... ??

He looks bald or balding to me. It is good he spoke up before a scientist decided to study why there are so many bald men in that area. Reminds me of the story of another city in a certain foreign country (can't remember which) where there is an abnormal number of twins. Maybe a sperm donor was busy there too.

[Tommygun264]

08:05 AM on 12/25/2009

It is my understanding that the gene that causes common male pattern baldness comes from the birth mother, not the biological father. I don't know whether or not a recessive form of the gene would be passed from Dr. Maxey to his female offspring, but even if that were the case, it would mean that only the second generation (Maxey's biological garndsons) could become bald as a result of their biological relationship to Dr. Maxey.

[Randy Arnold]

11:20 PM on 12/24/2009

to make his child support payments or to visit a crush on a nurse at ths sperm bank??

[KCMeade]

12:05 PM on 03/13/2010

looked 4 u on fb

[jessicajuliette]

05:57 PM on 12/24/2009

Take your child to work Day must be a madhouse at his office....

[Agbar]

01:27 PM on 12/25/2009

Amazing! This made me laugh so hard. Thank you.

[Naithom]

04:44 PM on 12/25/2009

Yeah but Father's Day would make it worth it!

[ArtsyJane]

10:44 AM on 12/24/2009

Also, why is this in the "style" section???

[sonoffestus]

02:54 AM on 12/26/2009

Using sperm banks was once in style, maybe?

[ArtsyJane]

10:42 AM on 12/24/2009

This is just sick! No human is meant to reproduce on such a grand scale, this is an enormous genetic hazard. What a quack!

There should be a law against that sort of thing. Genetic variety must be preserved.

[tallycat2]

10:49 PM on 12/26/2009

No, it's not an enormous genetic hazard - you just don't know math. There were approximately 4 million children born each year during the roughly 25 year period since 1980. That's about 100 million people - and these 400 are distributed across most of those years. That means they are one in every 250,000 people born in the US during that time. The odds that 2 of them will marry each other are 1 in 250,000 squared - that's one in 62.5 billion. You're better off worrying about falling asteroids.

Human females (I take it that ArtsyJane puts you in that group) have a genetic aversion to males with multiple female partners - this is because under the conditions where humans evolved, such males would have been very poor mate choices. Women are programmed to select for faithful mates to avoid having to compete with other women for the resources and protection of their children's father. Those factors become utterly meaningless when the father is an anonymous donor. By definition - the female gets no resources or attention - just the genes. In such a case, it is appropriate that all the attention should be focused there.

[public enemy]

11:36 PM on 12/26/2009

I love biology and statistics. I was worried until I read this post.

[Abendroth85]

01:51 AM on 01/12/2010

Agreed, and I love your post, but I'd like to point out an error in your statistics. The odds are better than that if most of the impregnated women are from the same area, since they used the same sperm bank. If some of their kids stay in the area, then there could be as many as 400 people of about the same age in the same area (SE Michigan), not just the same country.

[bolmah]

09:49 AM on 12/24/2009

Eww, His son might slam his sister or brother.

[BannedbannedBunny]

07:21 AM on 12/24/2009

In such a small world, one or more of these children could be dating their half sibling and never know it.