View source for Repository for Germinal Choice

{{Short description|Former sperm bank in California}}
{{Infobox company
| name = Repository for Germinal Choice
| logo = 
| type = 
| industry = {{unbulleted list|[[Fertility treatment]]|{{nowrap|[[Semen cryopreservation]]}}}}
| fate = 
| predecessor = <!-- or: | predecessors = -->
| successor = <!-- or: | successors = -->
| founded = {{Start date and age|1980}}
| founder = [[Robert Klark Graham]]
| defunct = {{End date|1999}}
| hq_location_city = [[Escondido, California]]
| hq_location_country = United States
| area_served = <!-- or: | areas_served = -->
| key_people = 
| products = 
| owner = <!-- or: | owners = -->
| num_employees = 
| num_employees_year = <!-- Year of num_employees data (if known) -->
| parent = 
| website = <!-- {{URL|example.com}} -->
}}

The '''Repository for Germinal Choice''' (originally named the '''Hermann J. Muller Repository for Germinal Choice''', after [[Nobel laureate]] [[Hermann Joseph Muller]]) was a [[sperm bank]] that operated in [[Escondido, California]] from 1980 to 1999. The repository is commonly believed to have accepted only donations from recipients of the [[Nobel Prize]], although in fact it accepted donations from non-Nobelists, also.<ref name="Slate3">{{cite web |url=http://www.slate.com/id/101318/ |title=The Myths of the Nobel Sperm Bank |author=David Plotz |date=February 23, 2001|publisher=Slate |accessdate=24 March 2010}}</ref> The first baby conceived from the project was a girl born on April 19, 1982. Founded by [[Robert Klark Graham]], the repository was dubbed the "Nobel prize sperm bank" by media reports at the time.<ref>{{cite web| author=Robert Lee Hotz | work=Los Angeles Times | title=Robert Graham, Founder of Exclusive Sperm Bank, Dies | url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-02-18-mn-29931-story.html | date=February 18, 1997 |access-date=October 28, 2016 | quote=Quickly dubbed the Nobel sperm bank, Graham's project . . . .}}</ref>  The only contributor who became known publicly was [[William Shockley]], Nobel laureate in physics.

==Management==
Robert Graham managed the bank until his death in February 1997 and the responsibilities were passed to Floyd Kimble, a businessman from [[Ohio]] who had shown interest in the bank. At the time of Graham's death, the bank claimed to have produced 217 children, none of whom from sperm donated from Graham's initial focus, Nobel Prize winners.<ref name="Slate1">{{cite web |url=http://slate.com/id/100331/ |title=The "Genius Babies," and How They Grew |author=David Plotz |date=February 8, 2001|publisher=Slate |accessdate=24 March 2010}}</ref><ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/02/books/a-bizarre-tale-of-the-rise-and-fall-of-an-elitist-sperm-bank.html A Bizarre Tale of the Rise and Fall of an Elitist Sperm Bank], Janet Maslin, [[New York Times]], June 2, 2005</ref> When Kimble died in 1998 the combined relatives of both men decided to close down the bank. All sperm samples were destroyed; it remains unclear what happened to the Repository's records.<ref name="Slate3"/>

==Donors==
Although most news articles of the time made much of the Repository's "Nobel sperm" standards, in fact the Repository is only known to have stocked the sperm of one Nobelist, William Shockley. Other donors were recruited from among the ranks of scientists and academics Graham and his assistant, Paul Smith, considered to be "the future Nobel laureates".<ref name="Slate3"/>

Graham's initial attempts to recruit Nobel laureates who lived near the Repository yielded only three volunteers, Shockley among them; however, when the news media began reporting on the existence and intentions of the Repository, two of the laureates broke off their ties to Graham and did not donate. Only Shockley remained, and even he donated only once. Paul Smith was charged with recruiting new donors, and he traveled throughout California, focusing mainly on college campuses, in search of volunteers. Smith later estimated his "hit rate" of donors signed up compared to men he invited to be "six or eight, maybe ten" out of one hundred. The search was expanded to country-wide, and eventually more donors were recruited, although none of them were – then or currently – Nobel laureates. At the time of his death, Graham had expanded his requirements to allow athletes, artists, and businessmen as donors.<ref name="Slate3"/>

One donor named Jason Kaiser, known as Orange Red at the repository, was featured in the 2003 documentary along with Paul Kisak. The documentary was entitled ''Genius Sperm Bank'', which the [[Discovery Channel]] broadcast in 2004. The documentary briefly touched upon Kaiser's viewpoints at the time, and reunited him with three of the nine children that reputedly had resulted from his donations. Although not a Nobel laureate, Kaiser did achieve a [[Master of Science]] degree in [[cytogenetics]] and Kisak was in [[Mensa International|Mensa]], [[Intertel]], [[CIA|the CIA]] and had an [[MBA]] and multiple [[Engineering]] degrees.

==Recipients==
As with the Repository's criteria to accept sperm donors, its criteria for women to receive sperm from the bank were not as high as initially reported. Rumors that women were required to be members of [[Mensa International|Mensa]] were false; in fact, women did not need to meet any particular intellectual requirement. Essentially, any woman who was married, in good health, and not homosexual was accepted; the only women reported to have been refused sperm were "one [woman] who took [[Lithium (medication)|lithium]], [and] another who was obese and diabetic."<ref name="Slate3"/>

==Outcomes==
Graham's original intention was to monitor the outcomes of children produced through the bank's sperm, and he asked families using the bank's sperm to agree to periodic surveys; however, most recipients showed no interest in sharing information on their children once the procedure was over, and when he sent out a survey to recipient families in the early 1990s, few families responded. Two women who claimed to have been the recipients of Repository sperm and to have raised children born of that sperm responded anonymously to a series of articles in ''[[Slate (magazine)|Slate]]'' in 2001. Both stated that their children were extremely intelligent and healthy.<ref name=Slate1/>

A later segment of the same ''Slate'' article reported on the highlights of the lives of fifteen of the resultant children. Of the fifteen, six reportedly had 4.0 [[grade point average|GPAs]] and two were reported to be "artistically precocious". One child was reported by his parents as a "math-science genius" and another as a "musical whiz". All the children contacted by ''Slate'' were in good health, except one, who had what his mother described as a "developmental disability".<ref name="Slate2">{{cite web |url=http://www.slate.com/id/106575/ |title=The "Genius Babies" Grow Up |author=David Plotz |date=May 30, 2001|publisher=Slate |accessdate=24 March 2010}}</ref>

==In media==
Journalist [[David Plotz]] wrote several articles on the repository for the online magazine, ''[[Slate (magazine)|Slate]]''. Plotz would later write a book about his experiences investigating the repository in the book ''The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank'' (2005). Moreover, a documentary, which aired on [[Horizon (BBC TV series)|BBC Horizon]] in 2006, went over the history of the Repository and various statements made by Graham. The program also featured discussion from another donor, University of Central Oklahoma biology professor [[James Bidlack]].<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/5078800.stm The genius sperm bank]</ref>

''[[The Big Bang Theory]]'''s [[Pilot (The Big Bang Theory)|pilot episode]] satirizes the repository when [[Leonard Hofstadter|Leonard]] and [[Sheldon Cooper|Sheldon]] visit the "high-IQ sperm bank," intending to donate specimens, only to leave after Sheldon suffers a moral crisis over committing "genetic fraud" by donating sperm that may not produce the promised genius offspring.<ref>{{Cite episode |title=[[Pilot (The Big Bang Theory)|Pilot]] |series=[[The Big Bang Theory]] |network=[[CBS]] |airdate=2007-09-24 |season=[[The Big Bang Theory (season 1)|1]] }}</ref>

Episode 5 of ''[[This is Life with Lisa Ling]]'' focused on the sperm bank, interviewing people who donated, people who went to the sperm bank seeking donated sperm, and people who were born as a result.<ref name=CNN>{{cite news|last1=Escobedo|first1=Tricia|title=A sperm bank just for supersmart people|url=http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/08/health/genius-sperm-bank/|accessdate=28 September 2015|publisher=CNN}}</ref>

The German novel ''Fast genial'' ("Almost Genius") by [[Benedict Wells]] tells the story of a fictitious child produced by the sperm bank, who searches for his biological father.

==See also==
* [[Heritability of IQ]]
* [[My Uncle Oswald]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}9. Singareddy, Nikita "The Nobel Prize Sperm 

Bank"<ref>{{Cite web|last=Singareddy|first=Nikita|title=The Nobel Prize Sperm Bank|url=https://waitingroom.substack.com/p/the-nobel-prize-sperm-bank|access-date=2021-08-17|website=waitingroom.substack.com|date=24 June 2020 }}</ref>

https://waitingroom.substack.com/p/the-nobel-prize-sperm-bank  

24 June 2020

==Further reading==
*Plotz, David, ''The Genius Factory'', 2005, Random House. {{ISBN|1-4000-6124-5}}

==External links==
*[http://slate.com/id/100331/ Series of Slate.com articles on the sperm bank]
*[https://www.theguardian.com/life/feature/story/0,13026,1191592,00.html Guardian article on Graham and his bank's history]
*[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5078800.stm BBC Article]
*[http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/sperm.shtml Horizon Episode]

{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Eugenics in the United States]]
[[Category:Companies based in San Diego]]
[[Category:Health care companies based in California]]
[[Category:Defunct companies based in California]]
[[Category:Privately held companies based in California]]
[[Category:Companies established in 1980]]
[[Category:Companies disestablished in 1999]]
[[Category:Escondido, California]]
[[Category:Sperm donation]]
[[Category:Sperm banks]]