Who’s Your Daddy? George Clooney? Brad Pitt? The World of Celebrity Genetics
A sperm bank solicits celebrity look-alike donors for women who want their kids to resemble their favorite movie star.
There are so many things to worry about when you’re thinking about having a child. Do you have what it takes to be a good parent? Do you have enough money? What if it looks like your mother-in-law?
Well, worry no more about that last one. You take care of the good parenting and money and California Cryobank’s Donor Look-A-Likes will take care of the rest. Gone are the days of trepidation, wondering if your child will be a genetic loser. The Cryobank is the Play-Doh factory of baby making:
California Cryobank’s Donor Look-A-Likes service offers would-be parents the chance to search for prospective donors based on which famous face the sperm donor most closely resembles.
California Cryobank has been in the news lately for announcing the opening of a Park Avenue location, but it’s the special service of celebrity look-alike sperm donors that has people talking. Their site offers a searchable database of sperm donors with a list of celebrities to choose from, ranging from Carmine Gotti to Wayne Gretzky to Nick Jonas. You can even mix and match — perhaps you want a donor that resembles the love child of Carl Weathers and Adam Sandler.
This isn’t a far cry from services that are already available elsewhere — sperm banks allow you to choose from a variety of characteristics, including ethnicity and intelligence. But most of us are a bit uncomfortable picking and choosing for a future child’s appearance, be it for religious, moral, or ethical reasons. And hearing a couple say it is trying to engineer a little Brad Pitt sends off all kinds of warning bells.
What happens when the kid comes out looking like E.T. instead of Wolverine?
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Michele Catalano lives, writes, and takes photographs on Long Island.
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12 Comments
1. Marie Claude:just the idea, that a guy had to exite himself on a porn pic to blow himself, and to pread his perm into a glass, doesn’t appear to me inspirating for having a child, ladies, better get a dog !
Sep 15, 2009 - 5:48 am 2. vicsmith:This is disturbing in too many ways for me to even start. This has to be fiction.
Sep 15, 2009 - 6:31 am 3. Steve:I wonder if the sex of the offspring is selected to be the same as that of the movie star. This seems like eugenics gone amok.
Sep 15, 2009 - 6:55 am 4. oldguy:I think I’ve seen pictures of young ladies with strange looking fluids on their faces, which reminds me of this article.
Sep 15, 2009 - 7:46 am 5. Tolbert:Seems like I’ve finally found my niche in life, Ladies.
That is if you want your children to resemble Bert Lahr.
Bert Lahr
Sep 15, 2009 - 8:20 am 6. Delia:I’ve seen really unfortunate looking people have absolutely gorgeous children and visa versa.
This is a really bad idea. What happened to beauty is in the eye of the beholder?
Just creepy.
Sep 15, 2009 - 9:27 am 7. Maria Edi:Just picture this:
Sep 15, 2009 - 10:28 am 8. GlobalObserver:a baby who looks like George Clooney, but with the mind of … Ahmadinejad. Or Kim North Korea.
Reminds me of Ira Levin’s The boys from Brazil.
Be afraid. Be very Afraid …
This reminds me of years ago when I was a reporter and had to cover the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank story (yes, there really was a donor’s pool of famous scientists in the early 1980s).
Turns out the first “couple” to give birth to one of the little future geniuses was discovered to have been charged with child abuse years earlier in Illinois.
They still made $10K off the photos, which is another story.
Sep 15, 2009 - 2:14 pm 9. stiffy:Home delivery, no extra charge.
Sep 15, 2009 - 3:01 pm 10. Roderick Reilly:The difference between a regular bank and a sperm bank is that with the latter, you lose interest after making a deposit.
No, I don’t have anyhting serious to say here, are you kidding?
Sep 15, 2009 - 4:14 pm 11. Tommy Peters:A one bullet test. You have to shoot either Clooney or Voight. Who would you keep alive!
Sep 16, 2009 - 1:43 am 12. JohannS:These days you can’t tell anymore what is real and what is Science Fiction. If you’re surprised by this article, think about what we’ll have in a not so far future:
It will be possible to have a cloned baby of your favorite actor once you know their DNA sequence (you could download it for a price, or pirated). People will have their DNA trademarked. You’ll be able to run a simulation of the DNA sequence of your 4 weeks old baby in gestation and know how he will look, expected IQ, illnesses, etc. so you can decide whether you want to have him or not. And someday, women will be able to have their fertilized eggs removed and implanted into a mechanical “surrogate mother” so that they don’t have to go through the hassle of pregnancy. All for a comfortable price, of course.
Yes, technology can be used for things good, but also for things bad, weird or plain disgusting.
Sep 16, 2009 - 9:56 am