The answer to Eric Kjellberg's money problems may be in his pants.
The 22-year-old cinema major has a lot to offer and is willing to give his time and energy -- if he can get paid for it.
He's also willing to share his blue eyes, his curly brown hair and his 6-foot frame.
For the past six months, Kjellberg has been thinking about making a little extra cash by becoming a sperm donor.
The SF State junior said he hasn't yet made an appointment for a screening because he's been "procrastinating." Other than that, he said he doesn't see anything wrong with selling his reproductive fluid.
"I don't really have anything against donating sperm."
He said he's just worried about making ends meet.
The brakes are going out on Kjellberg's 1983 Honda Accord, and two weeks ago he replaced one of the axles. He lives alone, and with food, rent and tuition, life is getting pretty expensive for this SF State student.
This year, he was awarded a Pell Grant for $1,240 and has taken out a student loan for $5,500. But it still isn't enough for Kjellberg, who is on the verge of maxing out his credit card.
"I'm a struggling college student that needs money," said Kjellberg, adding that his older brother, a UC-Davis graduate, made $400 in one month by donating to a sperm bank in the Sacramento area.
When members of Kjellberg's family get together, they have lighthearted discussions about what his brother has done.
"We crack jokes about it," he said.
For others, however, sperm donation is serious business and strikes a haunting cord.
"I would think that many men would feel more hesitancy before giving their sperm," said Albert Angelo, a health educator at the Health Center.
"I would have a difficult time emotionally. I wouldn't be able to stop thinking that somewhere a child was conceived using my sperm and that that person is genetically 50 percent me."
Kjellberg, who one day hopes to get married and have children, is aware that opinions differ when it comes to donating sperm.
"Some people think that you're giving part of yourself away -- that you're giving your kid away," Kjellberg said.
Todd Carter, a 25-year-old senior in liberal studies, has mixed feelings about the issue. He said that although everyone should have access to reproductive technologies, he still finds the whole thing a little weird.
"If a woman wants to get pregnant, she should have some options, including sperm banks," Carter said. "But it's a strange concept to be putting sperm away in a fridge."
Angelo said others are more analytical and equate sperm donation with something more common, such as giving blood.
Patti Myer, a graduate student in the anthropology department, said that the ethics behind the controversy lie in the "notion of science as an ideology as opposed to religion."
Myer believes that because anonymity is inherent in donating sperm, it shouldn't matter if the sperm a woman purchases was donated by a man who did it for the money. "My initial reaction is: 'So what?'," she said.
Nonetheless, tissue banks pay more for sperm than blood. "Money is a factor," Angelo said.
At The Sperm Bank of California, monetary compensation serves as a symbolic transaction which formalizes the agreement sperm donors enter into, and it helps to discourage any paternal feelings that may follow successful insemination.
"The fact that there's an exchange going on implies a contractual relationship so that that guy giving me his sperm is not his dad," said Barbara Raboy, the executive director of the facility. "He's not the legal father of the person who eventually gets the sample. He's a sperm donor."
Raboy pays between $1 and $40, depending on the size of the sample, for each deposit. Donors usually visit the clinic to give sperm once a week over the course of a year. Payments could reach in excess of $2,000 a year.
The Sperm Bank of California receives between 200 to 250 donor applications a year, which breaks down to about 80 applications per semester.
Raboy advertises regularly in the Golden Gater. About 10 men have responded so far this semester, and out of the three that followed through, only one made it into the latter screening stages. But he was turned away because of "a genetic disorder" that ran in his family, Raboy said.
The facility was located in East Oakland until last May, when Raboy chose to relocate due to donor shortages. The current location skirts the UC-Berkeley campus.
"One of the reasons we moved here is because we need donors. And a campus setting, what a marketplace of men -- healthy young men," Raboy said. "With the way the economy has been going in the last five to 10 years, there's no question that there are financial incentives for men to be sperm donors."
Since the move, Raboy said, "It's been a dream come true."
[ Golden Gater - November 7, 1996 ]
All Rights Reserved © 1996 HTML by Steve Thoemke (sthoemke@nermal.santarosa.edu)