A benevolent SF Bay man has gotten himself into quite a sticky mess with the government for running a free, ad-hoc sperm bank off his website. He's already fathered 14 children with his donations and more are on the way. He thinks it's charity, but now the feds wanna shut him down.


The FDA has issued a warning and sent a cease-and-desist letter to Trent Arsenault of Fremont saying that he had better quit unloading his unregulated spunk or pay the price. Arsenault has been giving away his sperm online through his website TrentDonor for five years to people who want children but can't afford traditional clinics. That's awfully nice of him, but unfortunately "informal sperm donation" is illegal because it violates FDA regulations on human cells and is punishable by up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine.

Arsenault maintains an unbelievably comprehensive dossier of information about himself on the site with all the information somebody researching a donor would probably want to know. He posts everything from his height and weight to pictures of him over his whole life to a criminal background check to his personal history to information about the children he's fathered. Arsenault treats the whole operation like a real clinic. There's even a downloadable donor agreement for people who are interested. The whole site actually paints the picture of a sincere, well-adjusted man. Until you see the pictures of a vial of semen. (YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!) Maybe that's the kind of thing an interested party would want to see, but it just seems really really weird. [MSNBC via John C Abell]