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From Inside Science News Service, Christian Science Monitor
and MinnPost journalist Sharon Schmickle
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    Googling for family roots

    By Sharon Schmickle | Published Tue, Nov 17 2009 6:15 am

    The Internet’s amazing reach, it turns out, extends to individuals who donate sperm for assisted reproduction.

    Once, the donations were largely a private matter, even shielded from couples that sought help having babies. Nurses and doctors often selected the sperm for them.

    But now offspring from those transactions are taking to the Internet, seeking information about their sperm “fathers” and trying to find others born of the same donor.

    Psychologist Andrea Braverman, of the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey, is to talk about the implications at 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 18, at the University of Minnesota’s Coffman Union, 300 Washington Ave. S.E., Minneapolis. The lecture, co-sponsored by two university programs in law, health and life sciences, is free and open to the public.

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    minnpost.com/scientificagenda



    Scientific Agenda reports on important and interesting developments from the world of science in Minnesota and elsewhere. Coverage includes reports from MinnPost journalist Sharon Schmickle, who has won many awards for her science journalism. She has also taken part in several science fellowships, including the Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowship at Cambridge University in England, the Knight Science Journalism program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Latin American fellowship sponsored by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing Inc. in New York.




    Scientific Agenda also features material from other sources, including Inside Science News Service, a Washington, D.C.-based news service, which is supported by the not-for-profit American Institute of Physics, a publisher of scientific journals.

    Recent Scientific Agenda posts