The Genius Factory
The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank
by David Plotz, 2005 Robert Klark Graham believed that smart people are better people. He believed that intelligence is hereditary. He believed in Eugenics. And he believed in doing something about it. So he did. Graham collected sperm from men he believed to be intelligent- starting with three Nobel prize winners- and gave the sperm to women for artificial insemination. More than 200 people were born through this sperm bank during its seventeen years (it closed in 1999). David Plotz contacted 30 of these, to see if they had become the extraordinary people that Graham had predicted that they would be. Plotz was not particularly impressed. While the children were, on the whole, gifted, they did not seem extraordinary to him.
On other levels as well, Graham's project had not worked out as he had hoped. Graham had distributed sperm only to married women so that the children would have fathers, but most did not have good relations with their fathers. Graham was also not careful enough in screening his sperm donors. He took donors at their words about their IQ scores and past accomplishments. One donor gave his IQ as 160, but told Plotz that he made that up.
In
The Genius Factory, Plotz questions the wisdom of choosing intelligent sperm donors, but his criticism is not very academic. Plotz writes about artificial insemination via donor in general, and the family relationships and identities affected. Plotz's writing is interesting as a story, but beyond that its worth is questionable. Interestingly, of the thirty children that Plotz knew of, one is autistic (page 246). Plotz seems to count the autistic boy as one of the failures of the program, but perhaps not. The child lauded as a genius and as proving the success of the project, Doron Blake, sounds more than a little Aspergery (a prodigy with poor social skills).
Happy reading.
