Den gode sædcelle... En antropologisk analyse af arbejdet med sædkvalitet.

Abstract

THE GOOD SPERM CELL … | Questions about who has the right to be pregnant, and with whom, and which children should be allowed to be born are fundamentally political and normative. However, when fertilization involves reproductive tech nologies these normative questions are often translated into questions of quality whereby they come to appear technical. This becomes clear in thework to ensure “good sperm quality”. Sperm quality is measured both at a population level, in connection to fertility treatment of infertile men, in the recruitment of sperm donors and in connection with attempts to produce so-called artificial sperm. What is regarded as good quality is not only based on “medical evidence” but also on beliefs about what is wished for and what is not. Put differently, medical evidence is produced in light of specifically desired outcomes. This article asks how one determines sperm quality and what kind of practices and normative choices this evaluative process involves. The article builds on medical literature, fieldwork at both a laboratory dealing with sperm analysis and at sperm banks and on interviews with scientists working on the development of artificial sperm.

Beyond motivation: on what it means to be a sperm donor in Denmark

“…These continuous assessments of semen quality became part of how he understood himself as a man. He had integrated the model of good semen quality (Mohr and Høyer 2012 ) applied at Danish sperm banks into his embodiment of masculinity.…”

Containing Sperm—Managing Legitimacy

“…As a result of containment, donor semen becomes the focal point of a nature-culture dynamic (Mohr and Høyer 2012). After containment, rather than being a natural fluid associated with the male body, donor semen can be understood as a hybrid compound that Lisa Jean Moore and Matthew Allen Schmidt call techno-semen (1999).…”

“…My fieldwork began in early 2011 when I carried out participant observation at Nielsen Center, a clinical treatment and research center for male infertility in Denmark. Interested in the assessment of semen and semen quality, I followed the working practices at the lab in which the semen of infertile men was analyzed (Mohr and Høyer 2012). My fieldwork at two Danish sperm banks, Andersen and Jensen Sperm Bank, began in the fall of the same year.…”

“…Quantification, a result of specific methods, enables comparison and the establishment of a category of the normal which then is used to assign values such as good or bad quality to each sample. Far from being objective, these quality assessments are nevertheless understood as value free statements about the properties of semen samples (Mohr and Høyer 2012). This is to say that containing donor semen as a reproductive substance as part of sperm donation is enabled through biomedical parameters which have the goal of quantification and comparison in order to be able to evaluate.…”