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Tuesday, Oct 14, 2008
A company in California is offering soldiers heading to Iraq free storage of their sperm for a year.
Jan 31, 2003 | The last time American forces found themselves engaged in armed conflict in the Middle East, few predicted that thousands of them would return complaining of the collection of ailments -- including, in some cases, fertility problems -- that came to be called Gulf War Syndrome.
Although a series of reports reached conflicting conclusions about the causes of the illnesses, the government eventually acknowledged that troops had been exposed to toxic agents. Now, as the U.S. stands once more on the brink of battle with Iraq, fears of possible exposure to chemical and biological agents loom far larger in the public consciousness than a decade ago.
Men undergoing vasectomies or treatment for testicular or other cancers frequently freeze some of their sperm to maintain their reproductive potential. In the same spirit, California Cryobank, a leading sperm bank with offices in Los Angeles and Palo Alto as well as Cambridge, Mass., is offering free sperm storage to any male member of the armed forces heading for the Mideast who is worried about his future fatherhood potential.
Dr. Cappy Rothman, a urologist and the co-founder and medical director of California Cryobank, says that a recent study published in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health confirms the importance of storing sperm. In the study, which was conducted on laboratory rats, researchers examined three chemical agents to which military personnel serving in the Gulf War were believed to have been exposed: pyridostigmine bromide, a prophylactic treatment against nerve agents; DEET, an insect repellent; and permethrin, an insecticide.
According to the study, "combined exposure to these chemicals was implicated in the development of illnesses including genitourinary disorders among many veterans of the Persian Gulf War." And the researchers concluded that "testicular damage was "significantly augmented when the animals were further exposed to a combination of chemicals and stress."
Salon spoke with Dr. Rothman by phone about Cryobank's offer and the potential threat to the fertility of military personnel.
Why have you decided to offer this service??
I am old enough -- I'm 65 -- to have seen men in my practice that were Vietnam veterans. I remember men who had problems with fertility. Some of them had direct damage to their genital areas from stepping on land mines. Some had spinal cord injuries that affected their ability to have an erection and ejaculate. But others had abnormal sperm production for no obvious reason. And I remember repeatedly that they said they were exposed to the exfoliant Agent Orange. And these soldiers and their families were devastated because of their inability to have children. Had they stored their sperm prior to having engaged in war, they could have come back and had lovely families.
As for the Gulf War, many of the men came back and found that they were infertile. And the study recently published in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health showed that some of the agents they were given to protect them from nerve gas and insects can cause significant injury to testicular function in rats. So with our company's history and experience, it seemed to be a nice thing and something we could easily do to offer them free storage of their sperm for one year, which usually costs $240. The expense of having us process the sperm is minimal, less than $100. We wanted to make it easy for them.
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