Ep1 Shocking How Little We Know

It’s our first ever episode of Sperm Sisters and we’re kicking things off in Natasha’s living room armed with snacks, questionable knowledge, and a very eye-opening quiz. Helen puts us through our paces with a pop quiz on the donor-conceived world. Spoiler: we were not prepared.

From eyebrow-raising facts to genuinely shocking truths about the fertility industry (past and present 👀), Gemma and Natasha are left stunned… and slightly concerned. And just wait until you hear how long sperm can actually be frozen for - it’s a LOT.

Expect laughs, disbelief, and a strong sense of “surely that can’t be right?!”

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to Sperm Sisters, a podcast about three sisters, three DNA tests, and one life-changing discovery.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Join us as we spill the tea on what it's really like to discover your donor conceived and that you have siblings you never knew existed. Follow our story on Spotify and YouTube. Welcome to the family. Coming up on this week's episode of Sperm Sisters.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Sperm Tazoa is actually just the collective name for semen. Spunk or jizz, if you will. We have ourselves a cheeky little pop quiz. How much do you think you'd have got per donation? Bear in mind you can do multiple donations daily, even.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Great question. £100. Oh god, no. Ten pound. Ten shillings. And what question makes us totally shook? 55 years.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

So that now means that donor conceived people And that's sorry, that's an improvement, supposedly.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

I can't. I can't.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

No. So donor conceived people can have.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

I don't think that's right. It is right. I know that the fact is right, but I don't morally. Like morally, I really don't think that's right. But first, this is the first episode. Let us introduce ourselves. I'm Nasha, Essex-based, dance healthcare specialist, cat mum to Charlie and Schmoo, as well as partner to James. And I am statistically very likely to lose my passport. Hello, I'm Gemma. I'm an artist. I'm a mum of two to Josh and Maisie, and I'm the other half of Leon, who is the same part of my brain. I'm a huge fan of any opportunity that involves getting people together, cooking, and just having a really good natter.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Hi, I'm Helen. I'm a piano teacher, mum of one little boy, and currently very big as I'm pregnant to our second child. Fun facts about me, I'm a qualified archery instructor. I was once on an episode pointless. That's really good. Like it?

SPEAKER_02 2:14

I love it. That's great.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

So for today's episode, my name is Helen, and I'm going to be leading it, loosely leading, I will say, because obviously you've heard from our bio intro bit that we're all donor conceived. But a lot of people listening might not actually have heard that term that much or will be thinking, well, what's that about? Well, today I will be telling you exactly what it's about. The only thing I need to caveat is when you actually delve into the history of donor conception, it is like very murky and probably some bits I would say a little controversial. So just to play it fairly safe for the first one, I'm only gonna do UK-based donor conceived history. Great. Okay? Yeah. So just UK. So none of this like Who's Your Daddy Netflix documentary, horrifying things from America. It's not that, okay? It's gonna be get rid of the horrifying things from America. No.

SPEAKER_02 3:18

Shake Trump, no!

SPEAKER_00 3:22

I love America. I love America. I love America. My God.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

You siss it!

SPEAKER_00 3:30

No, because I'm sweating. I'm so scared I'm gonna offend people. Okay. Um, so I'm just going primarily UK-based to play this safe, alright? Perfect. Cool.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

So hit us with your facts.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

What I'm gonna do is ask you questions, girls, and I want to know what your initial thoughts are. Do you know the answers? And then hopefully we can all together learn a little bit more about what is the history of being Dana conceived? Lovely. That's lovely. All right. Who's the teacher of the group?

SPEAKER_01 4:03

I wonder. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Well, the first question is When was the first successful pregnancy with frozen spermatozoa? Have you ever heard of that word? No. Neither had I. Please. Spermatozoa is actually just the collective name for semen. Spunk or jizz, if you but if you but there's also spermoo actually, I might have to just google it, but I think it was spermza. It's for a single sperm.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Anyway. No way! A spermooza.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

So I'll just re-ask that question because we went off the site. ADHD tangent there. When was the first successful pregnancy with frozen sperm? Do you know?

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Now, is this the from the film that we said that we all watched, is this like, are we going back as far as 1950s? Or yeah, is it right? That right straight away. Oh my gosh. Is it 1950 or 1950s? Yeah, it's 1953. I was gonna say two. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

What's a year a month, friends? Um yeah, you're right, 1953. So that actually did happen in America uh by a man called Sherman in the University of Arkansas. But I was oh my god, is it? Why is it N with an S and not W?

SPEAKER_01 5:33

To be honest, why anything, Helen, with this topic? I was thinking at the time, I was like, where is Cans? Like, is that why Dorothy's from Kansas? Is she actually from Arkansas? No, there's there's a place called Kansas, there's Kansas City, and I think it's in Arkansas. All right. Well, anyway, that's the only bit of America, so it's fine.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

That's our that's Arkansas, baby. That's Arkansas. Obviously, that's the that's the bit of America that we're doing, okay? But I do need to say that that is about frozen sperm, first successful pregnancy with frozen sperm. If you actually go back like full history, which honestly I'm not going to because it was really long. And I was like, I'm just gonna start about 50s, is where I'm at. Yeah. Because prior to that, it's obviously a huge grey area as um, there's just not enough data on it. You don't really know whether it was done on purpose of insemination or like what I'm trying to avoid saying, which my hand have to keep it. Handmade south was okay with it. Well, some of it came across a little bit like that, and I was like, oh, that's not very lighthearted, so that's why I've gone for frozen from froze to modern contemporary donor conception. Correct. Nothing like Henry VIII, weird. Okay. Okay? Mm-hmm. Because of that, when do you think sperm banking as a concept became commercialised?

SPEAKER_01 7:03

Oh you go, I did the first one. I did the first one. You go, okay, well, what I was actually going to say was, can I throw the question back at you? Please. Be that really annoying student. Yeah. What's a sperm bank?

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Oh, just a very good question. So a sperm bank essentially is where uh men will have gone or women, no, sperm. Just just men, I think, produce sperm. Hang on. Ridiculous. A sperm bank historically would have been used for the storage of sperm or spermatozoa, as we now know, uh, would be for the storage or the distribution of sperm. So really it was it would have been brought about so that clients, let's say, because it is ultimately a business, it was something that was created for the storage or distribution of spermatozoa, as we now know. So it was used ultimately as a new business idea. So the reason it's called a bank is people could go and collect sperm that they wanted. Good God. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

And was that um my guess?

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Can I guess? Yeah, when do you think that started happening in the UK? 1980s. Wrong. 1970s.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Oh, not far off. It's still like mid-century. Wow, okay. Okay, so in the 1970s, uh that must mean that in the UK the concept of being donor-conceived or needing a donation of an egg or sperm was now starting to ramp up then. Because if there was a need to have sperm banks, like plural, then there must have been quite a few dotted around the place where people could go donate and then carry on with their lives.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Carry on in the merry way. I mean, tradition this is the difficulty because there's not a vast amount of records, which I will get into another time, but not a vast amount of records that have actually been kept historically about donor or donating because it was all done anonymously, um, and there was literally no cap on it. So what do you mean? I mean Right. If you're a struggling student, or if you're very skint, I guess one day you could just hit a Pali Street and go into multiple sperm banks donating, and you get money with every donation you give. And because things aren't legally checked, you could just give a fake name.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

And I literally was at a friend's for dinner not that long ago, and I was talking about this podcast that we were gonna be doing it, and I've known this guy for years, and he said, Oh, I am donated sperm and I was at uni. Yeah, and I was like, Oh, no way. What? And um why anyway did he do it? Cash for the money, he's in debt, but then he was like, um if I don't think he went through with it in the end, but he but he I think like he went started the process of like doing it and whatever for cash, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Yeah in today's society, which again I'll get more into, more stringent checks and things are done. Back then, not stringent no stringent checks are done. No. So how much do you think you'd have got per donation? Bear in mind you can do multiple day donations daily, even. I guess great question.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

£100. Oh god, no. In the seven in the 70s. In the 70s, £10.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

10 shillings. No, in the 70s, you would get from anywhere between three to five pounds. You're fucking kidding me. I'm not lying. That's all we cost. Today, they are not legally allowed to be paid more than £45 for their services. What? Yeah, seriously. Now, yeah, now there's a like in 2026, if someone donated, you each time you cannot be paid more than £45. Which I presume is to hopefully try and stop like anyone, I guess, with a bit of a God complex of like, I have fathered however many children.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

I mean, that's like a whole other topic to discuss because which no, I'm not gonna say it. I'm not gonna say it because you know that why why aren't there I mean there must be surely someone can only donate so many times? Well, right, okay, so you're sort of leading on to another one that I'm gonna give.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Um but what I will say is now things are more regulated. Yes. But we're talking about the wild west of sperm banks at the moment, okay? So there's zero regulation, you can give fake names. They did I think I believe that they screened for maybe like a couple of STDs. But but also some didn't either. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

So it's just like a complete risk. So we are referring to the 80s, the decade that we were chicken seeds. 70s eight.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

70s, 80s, which I guess brings me on. So this is just sperm banking.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Do you know when the first test tube baby actually was born, i.e. IVF?

SPEAKER_01 12:41

I feel like we do know this. 1960s.

unknown 12:44

No.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Is it earlier? No, it's later.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Oh. Oh! Yeah. 1978, a lady called Louise Brown. She's only 47 now. She was the first IVF baby.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

IVF and Test tube are different. Are they? Yeah. Stop it. She's test tube baby. We're not test tube. We're I we're IVF. No, we're test tube, because test tube baby is. I'm gonna be honest, I actually don't know the difference.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

I think I believe that test tube and IVF is basically the same, we're just mixed in a Petri dish.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

I haven't got a Scooby call Mandy. Let's find out. Put her on a loudspeaker. I shall.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

I shall hello ma'am. I have a question for you. Are you still at Natasha's or are you on your yes? Hi Mandy!

SPEAKER_01 13:42

We're still we're still here. I just haven't good. We are currently recording the podcast. No, we are currently doing it now, but we have a question for you.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Yeah. Go on, Helen. What do you know what the difference is between a test tube baby and an IVF baby?

SPEAKER_02 14:08

Absolutely nothing.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

Oh right, thanks, mum. Thank you. I knew that. Right, okay. So sorry. Thank you, Mum.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

Thank you, Mandy. Feel free to call. Thanks. Love you. Bye, bye. Love you, little bye.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Louise actually is is Louise is the first test you baby. Got it. We are not test you babies. We are donor-conceived. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

I think I actually I I think my head around. I think I'm starting to get it. No, Helen, you probably understand it more than I do.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Go on. What do you think test you baby is then? Or IVF baby?

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Okay. I think an IVF baby is where you get the mum's egg, the dad's sperm out of them. Put it together. Mix it up. Put it in a test tube.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Yeah. So you're mixing both the the games they're called, the sperm and the egg together, uh to create an embryo which is then artificially inseminated into the mum. Right. However, none of us are actually IVF. This is a common misconception for people who are donor conceived because they've all been told that they're IVF. But we're not, because we're just from donor sperm. So the donor sperm has just been artificially inseminated. So yeah, sorry, please. Yeah. How? Oh god, I don't know. Okay. Turkey based there?

SPEAKER_01 16:06

I don't know. Five. Don't go and wait for Landy. Yeah, yeah. Get Mandy back on the phone. God's sake, don't think I want to know. Yeah, okay, so um, we're artificially inseminated. We are the original AI.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Yeah. That's quite nice. I like that.

unknown 16:24

I knew it.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

Can I just tell you a fun fact about Louise? Yes! She's 47. She was born in Oldham General Hospital in the UK. She married a doorman called Wesley. It's just nice. I never hear the name Wesley anymore. So I thought that was nice. Right, so I think we've covered basically the history of when sperm banking, sperm donation was starting to become commercialized. How long do you think it was unregulated for? Do you know when it started to become regulated? 2005.

unknown 16:57

Nope.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Too late.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

No, no, no, no, no. 1991. Yes. When you say regulated, do you mean like I mean that records had to be kept?

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Because you well, actually no.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

I was gonna say you and I, well, we're 89ers. Yeah. Gemma and I at highest Tash. Gemma and I were 1989. Helen, you were 1991. Yes. Now we're assuming that the sperm donor I don't know, like, you know, kept a little bit on the side for you for later. Well, I don't think he did. I don't think he gave a shit. He just wanted some mummy. He wanted that three pounds.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

No, I I what I believe happened was that I was from a frozen batch. So probably maybe from the same donation as you guys, but I was on ice, so I wasn't created until 1991. Mm-hmm. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

And so this this is a good time to maybe just tell everybody that I'm 36, Tash, 36, Gem, 36. I am Gemma and I am 36. And Helen is I am Helen and I am 34.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

You should a little baby. I'm just a baby. Was it the baby? So I'm not actually an 80s baby.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

A 90s. Yeah, I reckon you could class yourself as one if you've been on ice. You were talking about regulations.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

Was that what you were talking about? Yes, yes, sorry. I thought of buffering for a second there. Prior to August 1991, there was no uh requirement to keep any sort of records at all about anyone who's donor conceived, how many babies had been born via certain batches. That was at the discretion of individual doctors if they wished to keep records, they could, but they didn't have to.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

So they just went to the sperm bank and then said, I've got mr. and Mrs. Jones here. Yeah. They want to have a baby. Yeah. But Mr. Jones isn't he's not working. Yes. He wished he would. Yes. We need a bit of backup. Have you got a pot in the back room for me that I could take back to Mrs. Jones and put it upper? Yes, I do.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Do you want to know anything about it for your future children? No.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

Perfect! Here we go. Fucking sorry. But that's it, isn't it? Like, so no one, no one wrote down who got what sperm, where people went, who even donated, nothing.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Well, it's down to the discretion of the individual doctors. Overall, not really, but what most people have now since found who are prior to 1991, anyone who's gone to try and find their records or ask for help at clinics that sometimes are defunct now, anyway. Um, they have had mysterious things like fires or all of their computers broke, or there's been a flood that affected the office, so all records were destroyed. That's really because of from 1991 with the creation of the HFEA, which stands for the Human Fertilisation Embryonic Authority. That's not right.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

That's the HFEA. That is in 1991, they came into action and they were like, guys, yeah. Because the Get some post-it notes out, come on, we're gonna start inbreeding soon.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

Because the UK government decided to start funding a register service so that the records could be kept. But already by then, how many people? Well, quite. Because if you think that it started from the 70s all the way to 1991, what I want you to both try and comprehend, you know, comprehend sounds wrong. I mean, what I want you to both try and envision is that from the 70s all the way to 1991, there had been no legal requirement whatsoever to cap how many donations one person could do, so how many siblings that could create in the world of the same age. There was no need to keep any records whatsoever. So that's 20 years worth of people who have been created that nobody has a figure on, and everyone was told medically do not tell your children that they are donor-conceived. It was best to but have plausible deniability. Um, as at the time they believed that was what was best. And that um is what happened to the three of us.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

And in 1991, I should say, that is when they also decided to create a limit, which still stands today. What is it? Uh that only ten families can use sperm or eggs from one donor. Statistically, you've got to be pretty unfortunate.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

To fuck your brother.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Yeah. But also there's records of that anyway now. Yeah. Whereas there weren't before. Okay. So you could have fucked your brother.

SPEAKER_02 22:12

Um right.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Do you want to know another insane?

SPEAKER_01 22:18

It was the 18! Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

Do you also want to know another absolutely insane law that was brought in in 2022 for something that people probably wouldn't have thought about? Yeah. So how long do you think you can store uh either sperm, eggs, or embryos for legally in the UK now? How long? Three years. This is where they would be on ice, obviously. Okay. How long can you have something on ice for? Seven years. Fifty-five years. What? So that now means that donor conceived people And that's sorry, that's an improvement, supposedly.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

I can't.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

I can't. No. So donor conceived people can have. I don't think that's right. It is right.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

I know that the fact is right, but I didn't morally.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Like morally, I really don't think that's right. It does seem a little suspect because obviously that means donor conceived people could have a half sibling that's 55 years older than them.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

Oh, that's all we need. Not that I've got a problem with that. But yeah, and then also like if that individual like wanted to, you know, and as we well, yeah. If one wanted to reach out to their sperm donor, for instance, and like you can't guarantee what sort of relationship that might lead to, but like they wouldn't be able to. Maybe.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

I mean, I would imagine no one's really thawing them out after 55 years. I just can't see the scenario for that anyway, but that's the now illegal limit. So that's something that's been brought to. Yeah, but that's from 2022. So that's so mad to think about. And kind of on that front, if we're still talking about laws and regulations for the history side of things, obviously nobody pre-1991 had any identifying information at all for of their donors, like completely anonymous. Yeah. And were the donors were told will always be anonymous, is a fact, I think, should also, we're kind of only coming from donor-conceived like ideologies. I think a donor legally then they were sort of guaranteed they'd always stay anonymous, which is something that should, I guess, be respected on their front too.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Because they didn't know that companies like Ancestry, 23andMe, My Heritage, all that were going to come out. Exactly. No one could have predicted No one could have predicted this.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

Yeah. That we found out. But when do you think it was first brought up that donor-conceived people should be legally entitled to have access to identifying information to their donors? 2005. Big up. But sorry, that's if you were just conceived from March uh 2005. So those people have only reached 18 in August of 2023. Oh yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_02 25:19

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

So obviously, that kind of brings us to the close on my quiz, because now we're up to current day. It's actually all pretty modern history, uh, the United Kingdom's history with donor conception. The first pregnancy happened in 1953 using frozen sperm, but in the UK, sperm banking didn't well hit off since the 70s, and it was completely unregulated until August of 1991. After that has become more normalized conversations in ethics or I guess the needs and desires of donor-conceived products and what they might need to access, which is why more rules and regulations have come in from either the open ID cohort, which is in March 2005, and then all the way through to changing how long you can store frozen sperm eggs or embryos in 2022. And that brings us up to today. So we're now living in a much more regulated world, not so wild west. But I thought hopefully that's cleared up some history for you there.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

Thank you. Thank you, Helen. Well done. Well done! Yeah, I think you absolutely smashed that because there's a lot in that that I didn't know, and yet we're donor conceived and we've known it for a while. But sometimes you just kind of go, oh my god, that's mad. And I think describing it as the wild west is perfect because that is the rest of our podcast. Get ready for the wild west, of how we found out, of uh bizarre little secrets and little breadcrumbs that have been fed throughout our entire lives and very close to actually meeting each other in person before we even knew that we were donor-conceived and not even realizing it. So and it's quite a nice way to end, isn't it? Basically, stay tuned for all the tea. Yeah. Yeah, well done. Well done. We did daddy ground. That's what we mate. Well done. Happy. I'm like busting me.