Word: sperm
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What's more, the legend of the Solution has its own Harvard Angle: The conventional wisdom, as I have received it, is that just as consulting firms target the nation's elite colleges, so sperm banks are willing to fork over exorbitantly large sums of money to tomorrow's leaders. In a fortuitous marriage of Darwinian and free-market pressures, the argument continues, Harvard semen is a hot commodity: Why make your child with any old sperm, the advertising jingle might go, when, for just a bit more, you can conceive a Harvard baby...
...more I think about it, the more I have trouble grasping--let alone answering--all the economic and moral questions raised by the selling of sperm. Which may say something about why, for all the talk, no one I know has taken serious steps toward implementing the Solution. Or at least why no one has admitted...
Curious to find out how the reality of giving sperm at Harvard lines up with the legend, I do some snooping around. Surprisingly, it isn't long before I find a sperm bank regular. A sophomore and an athlete, he's willing to talk on the condition of anonymity. He tells me that he first heard about the California Cryobank in The Crimson of all places, in the small advertisement the company places in the paper about once a week...
...system to its small green cups to its closed-circuit TV system. Still, it isn't long before he starts to deconstruct the myth. It comes out that an extensive medical profile and a battery of tests are required to become a California Cryobank employee, as well as a sperm-count that doubles the average. This screening process leaves less than 10 percent of the males eligible...
...describes it, if you do make the cut, giving sperm is the gold mine that the myth suggests: At $40 per ejaculate, he tells me, it's not too difficult to make $500 a month. That's roughly $200 per hour by his calculation, and enough to keep him from resuming the dorm crew job he held last year or calling home to ask for money...