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The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank
Random House
October 2006
On Sale: October 10, 2006
288 pages
ISBN: 0812970527
EAN: 9780812970524
Trade Size (reprint)
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Non-Fiction
It was the most radical human-breeding experiment in
American history, and no one knew how it turned out. The
Repository for Germinal Choice--nicknamed the Nobel Prize
sperm bank--opened to notorious fanfare in 1980, and for two
decades, women flocked to it from all over the country to
choose a sperm donor from its roster of Nobel-laureate
scientists, mathematical prodigies, successful businessmen,
and star athletes. But the bank quietly closed its doors in
1999--its founder dead, its confidential records sealed, and
the fate of its children and donors unknown. In early 2001,
award-winning columnist David Plotz set out to solve the
mystery of the Nobel Prize sperm bank. Plotz wrote an article for Slate inviting readers to contact
him--confidentially--if they knew anything about the bank.
The next morning, he received an email response, then
another, and another--each person desperate to talk about
something they had kept hidden for years. Now, in The Genius
Factory, Plotz unfolds the full and astonishing story of the
Nobel Prize sperm bank and its founder's radical scheme to
change our world. Believing America was facing genetic catastrophe, Robert
Graham, an eccentric millionaire, decided he could reverse
the decline by artificially inseminating women with the
sperm of geniuses. In February 1980, Graham opened the
Repository for Germinal Choice and stocked it with the seed
of gifted scientists, inventors, and thinkers. Over the next
nineteen years, Graham's "genius factory" produced more than
two hundred children.
What happened to them? Were they the brilliant offspring
that Graham expected? Did any of the "superman" fathers care
about the unknown sons and daughters who bore their genes?
What were the mothers like? Crisscrossing the country and logging countless hours
online, Plotz succeeded in tracking down previously unknown
family members--teenage half-brothers who ended up following
vastly different paths, mothers who had wondered for years
about the identities of the donors they had selected on the
basis of code names and brief character profiles, fathers
who were proud or ashamed or simply curious about the
children who had been created from their sperm samples. The children of the "genius factory" are messengers from the
future--a future that is bearing down on us fast. What will
families be like when parents routinely "shop" for their
kids' genes? What will children be like when they're
programmed for greatness? In this stunning, eye-opening
book, one of our finest young journalists previews America's
coming age of genetic expectations.
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