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Bioethicist Dr. Kevin Smith has recommended that the sperm of 18-year-old males be frozen and stored with the UK National Health Service (NHS) to prevent the effects of genetic damage being passed to offspring:
Men are having children later - the average age of fatherhood in England and Wales has increased from 31 in the early 1990s to 33 now. But while it remains possible to have children well into old age, there are consequences. Making his case in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Dr Smith said even small increases in the risk of disease could have a big effect when scaled up across a whole nation.
His solution is sperm banking for everyone on the NHS so that in older age men can turn to the sperm from their younger selves. He said there was no fixed age when someone could become an "older dad" but that people in their 40s might want to return [to] the sperm bank freezer. He said sperm should be banked ideally around the age of 18. It costs £150-200 per year to keep sperm privately, although an NHS equivalent should be cheaper to run.
From the abstract:
Modern genetic sequencing studies have confirmed that the sperm of older men contain a greater number of de novo germline mutations than the sperm of younger men. Although most of these mutations are neutral or of minimal phenotypic impact, a minority of them present a risk to the health of future children. If demographic trends towards later fatherhood continue, this will likely lead to a more children suffering from genetic disorders. A trend of later fatherhood will accelerate the accumulation of paternal-origin de novo mutations in the gene pool, gradually reducing human fitness in the long term. These risks suggest that paternal age is of ethical importance. Children affected by de novo mutations arising from delayed fatherhood can be said to be harmed, in the sense of 'impersonal' harm or 'non-comparative' harm. Various strategies are open at societal and individual levels towards reducing deleterious paternal age effects. Options include health education to promote earlier fatherhood, incentives for young sperm donors and state-supported universal sperm banking. The latter approach would likely be of the greatest benefit and could in principle be implemented immediately. More futuristically, human germline genetic modification offers the potential to repair heritable mutational damage.
Original Submission
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @03:29PM
They can avoid women having to use birth control if the men are castrated after providing the sperm. So at least the environmental aspect could easily be solved.
And it doesn't need to lead to the government deciding if you are allowed to reproduce. Instead, the task of storing the sperm and providing it back if you want a child is given to a company of your choosing, and the right to have children is then coupled to the ability to pay for it. However some totalitarianism would still be needed to enforce mandatory castration at the age of 19. If you want children, you either have to reproduce before that, or have the money to freeze your sperms for later. As a side effect poor people have less children simply because they cannot afford freezing their sperm. Evasion of castration would be considered a crime, for which you would get into prison if found out (and of course a forced castration without previous opportunity to save your sperm). Probably you'd get a certification of castration, and if you can't show that document (or the police believes it to be forged, for whatever undisclosed reason), they can take you to a mandatory fertility test.
Indeed, that might give a nice dystopian novel.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday June 25 2015, @03:34PM
I think you meant sterilization not castration? Sterilization makes men unable to reproduce, castration makes any sex uninterested in any sex at all.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Thursday June 25 2015, @03:38PM
Must have been, because testing if a 20 year-old has been castrated would make for quite a short novel...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @03:59PM
Probably. English is not my first language, and those are not exactly the type of words you learn in school. ;-)
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @04:37PM