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Miracle Baby

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Located inside a building of doctors' offices behind Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, the Repository is the only sperm and embryo bank in South Florida. (There's also one in Orlando.) The modest office is slightly scruffy and outdated: The lobby features dime store artwork on the walls, a plastic bowl of Milk Duds, and a television set that looks like it was bought in the '70s.

The place opened ten years ago as a full-service, blood-testing lab that also offered long-term sperm and embryo storage. Robert Moon, then the lab director, took over ownership in 1996 and discontinued most lab tests, instead choosing to concentrate on sperm and embryo storage. It's no wonder: Not even counting new patients, he brings in $106,000 a year just from annual storage fees.

Moon, a balding, bespectacled man wearing a white lab coat and a garish tie, now runs the operation along with his assistant, Mary Carmona. "Owning a sperm bank is sure a conversation starter at parties," cracks Moon.

One might think that sperm bank customers are single heterosexual women with raging biological clocks, married women whose husbands can't produce sperm, or lesbians. In reality they comprise only about 4 percent of Moon's business. Men with testicular cancer like Wetzel make up the vast majority of his clients. In the last two decades or so, doctors have been urging such patients to bank sperm before beginning chemotherapy, and men rendered sterile can now father children years later.

When Wetzel arrived at the Repository, a technician handed him a plastic-sealed specimen cup, and he was ushered into the "masturbatorium." A sign on the door of the room reads "Fidelity Sperm Bank -- Penalty for Early Withdrawal."

Despite its nickname the room is used by both men banking or donating sperm and women undergoing artificial insemination. Moon gets 70 to 100 calls a month from men wanting to be sperm donors. "They think they can become millionaires this way," laughs Moon. He carefully screens the donors and excludes 65 percent of them, for age (they have to be 18 to 35 years old), low sperm count, or if both sets of grandparents died of disease. Most applicants are medical or law-school students looking to make a quick buck; Moon pays $50 a shot. After they fill out an initial application and pass the first cut, the donors are invited in for extensive testing to rule out genetic diseases. If they pass that cut, they can donate sperm -- as often as once a month.

Lesbians, single women, and couples unable to conceive purchase the sperm. They can choose the father of their child from a catalog that lists the donor's ethnic origin, hair color, eye color, skin color, height and weight, years of college, occupation, and blood type. One vial of sperm costs $150, and most women require at least two. Moon charges an extra $200 to ship the vials in special Federal Express carriers containing liquid nitrogen. Women can insert the sperm, with syringes provided by Moon, in the masturbatorium or at their doctor's offices. "We've had 12 to 15 pregnancies in the last year," boasts Moon.

Moon has taken pains to make the masturbatorium homey. A blue easy chair sits at attention in front of the television set, within reach of the requisite X-rated movies (for example, Legends of the Kama Sutra) and Playboy magazines. A beige couch strewn with pillows takes up one wall, next to an end table laden with such magazines as Redbook and Health For Women as well as a radio for some relaxing mood music. A portrait of a nude woman stretching like a cat adorns one wall. A cushioned mat stands ready in the corner for those who want to get more comfortable, and a jumbo-size container of Handi Wipes and a can of Lysol spray are on hand to clean up any, um, messes.

It might seem that a man who just got a possible death sentence due to a cancer diagnosis might not be in the mood to masturbate. But Moon says 99 percent of patients have no problem filling their specimen cups. Men usually spend 10 to 20 minutes in the masturbatorium, but that varies. One man stayed for two hours, and another was done, "wham bam, thank you ma'am, before I could get back to my desk," says Moon. He allows clients to bring spouses into the masturbatorium to lend a hand. "You try to put them at ease," says Moon. One client even used phone sex to complete the task successfully.

Having gotten over his initial feeling of awkwardness, Wetzel also had no trouble, although he somehow felt "dirty" during the act. Am I going to be on the Internet next? he wondered. After he finished Wetzel handed the specimen cup to Carmona.

She threw the sperm into a blender and mixed it with a yellow liquid that looks like egg yolk but is really a special buffer to protect the sperm from going into shock and dying in the liquid nitrogen. "It's like saran wrap against the elements," explained Carmona. Next she poured the brew into vials and placed them into a special refrigerator to acclimate the sperm to the cold. The sperm mix can't be stuck into an environment like the cryovault that is hundreds of degrees below zero immediately, or it will crystallize, damaging the sperm. Its temperature must be lowered slowly, in stages.

Finally Wetzel's sperm was ready for the deep freeze.

Slapping labels with Wetzel's name, client number, and the date on the vials, Carmona then stuck them in a steel tray and cracked open the cryovault. Donning the protective gear, she fit the tray inside.

Sperm can't be preserved in an ordinary freezer. It has to be kept in liquid nitrogen, a blue liquid that maintains a temperature so glacial it can freeze your finger on contact, and a few drops can leave angry burns on your skin. The sperm has to be that cold to survive for years. Technicians top off the cryovault -- which contains 16,000 vials -- with liquid nitrogen once a week.

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