Latest / Hormone Heroes with Dr. Kelly Hopkins / Exploring Modern Family Building: Transparency and Health in Donor Conception with Daniel Bayen

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Exploring Modern Family Building: Transparency and Health in Donor Conception with Daniel Bayen · Hormone Heroes with Dr. Kelly Hopkins

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that you get more transparency, you get healthier donors, you get a stronger network of other recipients too.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: So those are really the main three reasons people choose to work with me and the other donors is they say number one, health.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: We know that you're healthier than a sperm bank donor who works a very stressful, let's say a job in the office, and he sits all day and all he doesn't really think about his reproductive health because he never gets to know the children.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: So he has a different kind of incentive than someone who knows, okay, this is going to impact this child, and I'm going to get pictures of the child, and I want the child to be healthy.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then the transparency openness is much bigger because you could ask an open donor anything and you can message him anytime.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like you have your customer support is basically the donor himself.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third big thing for my recipients is that they know the other recipients I work with are selected too.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: They're not just anyone.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: So those are people that they would like to connect to themselves at some point in life, or that those will people will be people with healthy families, so they don't have to worry that their half sibling or the half-siblings of their child will be in like neglected families or families with mental health issues and things like that.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Hormone Heroes, where I share testimonials from real people who have experienced bio-identical hormone therapy.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Men and women share the symptoms they have experienced and the difference proper hormone replacement has made.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: He is the founder of the Open Donor Association and is an advocate for more open, transparent, and health-conscious approaches to sperm donation in family building.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: His perspective is shaped by experiencing donor conception from both sides.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Daniel was conceived through sperm donation himself and later became an open sperm donor who has helped multiple families have children.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: His personal journey led him to examine how anonymous donor systems can affect identity, access to biological information, and the long-term well-being of donor-conceived individuals.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Through the Open Door Association, Daniel promotes a family-building model centered on transparency, informed decision-making, donor health, and respect for the future child's biological story.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Daniel was raised in Germany and now he lives outside of Miami.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: So welcome, Daniel.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for having me on, Kelly.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so excited to talk to you.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: This is a world I know nothing about.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: So you'll be educating probably lots of listeners about this.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: And just start by telling your own story.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: I myself was donor-conceived as long as I can remember.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: My mother, she is a single mother by choice, so she was a single mother by choice.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Her situation I encounter a lot as a donor myself, which is basically a woman who has done really well professionally and in her career.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: My mother, she's a professor in psychology, so she was successful academically speaking.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: That then in her mid-30s found herself in a pretty hard situation on the dating market or in the you know marriage market, you could call it as well, whereas the quality of men that were available to her in her, you know, mid-30s were just not the kind of men that she wanted to raise a child with or that she wanted as biological fathers to her children.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it makes sense.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: The best men are kind of picked out of the market in their 20s by women who do not go after career and who do not do not go, you know, spend their time focusing on their work.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So my mother was kind of, you know, she had two options to either choose and grow her family.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: She really wanted to be a mother, and she always knew that.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it didn't just happen naturally while she was, you know, becoming a professor.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that that's why she was then in that situation where she knew, okay, my the clock is ticking.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: I would would like to have multiple children.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm now, I think she was 34, 35 years old.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And she said instead of going with one of these guys, I I remember stories of her saying there were guys who would eat Pop-Tarts for breakfast, or who would put who would put their feet on the table and things like that, things that she didn't like.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Where she uh where she chose to go with the sperm donor.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I myself am donor-conceived with a sperm donor who was a bank donor and he and he turned into an open donor when I was 15 years old.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: So to me, open donation, a known network of half siblings was always very normal, something I grew up with, something that I cherished in many ways.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: I really enjoyed having a known father and knowing that, okay, you know, this is my donor, these are my half siblings, having a pretty clear and kind of open picture of who's who and who's related to me in that sense.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I've I I I met him when I was 15 years old.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: He became an open donor when I was 15 after his first wife suppressed his choice to connect to his donors-conceived children.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: She was worried about paternal investment and was a bit grabby in that sense that she didn't want him to connect to the donor-conceived children.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: They divorced, not because of that, for other reasons as well.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he was able to connect to me when I was 15 years old and to the other donor-conceived children too.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: I would say I'm like the most involved, most excited about the half-sibling network and my donor father.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I am kind of like, you know, ever all of my half siblings know know me quite well through my content, or also just because I I I connect to them and I talk to them.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: I spent time with my donor father and he co-parented me after I was 18 years old for a while.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: I like to say co-parenting because he really took on a fatherly role for a year.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: When I spent a gap year in California with him, he invited me to travel to California, spend a gap year with him and his second or current wife.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: They also had three children together, which shaped my, you know, my my beliefs, my identity, and my thoughts around family a lot.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: I really enjoyed having super young half siblings as well.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: My youngest half half-brother is now, I think, two years old, two and a half, something like that.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I really liked the fact that I was able to connect to them too and see them grow up and learn about how to raise young children and all of that, to a point where I then at some point decided I want to be a donor myself too.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where I am now.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: I've been donating as an open donor for two years now.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've helped about 25 families internationally in 10 different countries.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm now something or known in the industry as the most tested, most transparent, most open and healthiest donor available.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I really take my work very seriously, and I enjoyed, you know, helping families grow.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's what an incredible story, and what a beautiful end to a childhood as well.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, as you moved into adulthood.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just curious the emotional component to that for your mother and you know, as you met your father.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: How old were you when you knew you were a donor child?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: Did your did your mother tell you that early on or later in life?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's something like teaching a child how to walk.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like you don't remember how you were taught to walk anymore, and your parents tried to taught teach you walking before you were even able to walk.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's similar for me and my memory of how my mother told me I'm donor-conceived.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: I I remember having like conversations again and again because as my consciousness grew as a young child, I also needed kind of updates and needed kind of new information sometimes, right?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like some things I would not understand as a three or four-year-old, but I might understand them as a six, seven, or eight-year-old, right?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like the whole IVF process or why my mother chose a donor.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like those were questions that were kind of answered over time.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: My mother was always very open and very honest about it.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think because she's a professor in developmental psychology, she knows quite well how important it is to be so transparent and so honest to your children.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it's something that I take into my work as well.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't work with couples who want to keep their donor anonymous or want to lie to their child about its biological heritage and say someone else is the biological father.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like they sometimes have a dad with male factor and fertility.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: So they are looking for an anonymous donor, which I sometimes rarely get those requests because people know what I do and who I am in the industry, and so I don't get them a lot.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I also don't work with them because I believe this transparency and openness that my mother gave to me was really important and shaped why I had such a great experience being donor-conceived, while other donor-conceived children who, for one, maybe were lied to by their parents or by their fertility doctors, sometimes even fertility doctors would lie or s or swap samples or or switch samples with their own sperm, and things like that have happened.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Or you would have a donor-conceived child who to this day doesn't know about its half siblings or about its donor, right?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Which is there's a spectrum of transparency you can give.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think full transparency is the only right thing to do.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And and sperm banks, they they didn't do that for the most part.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: There were no donor sibling registries for the families that were successful.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Many families don't report a success, so only about 20% of pregnancies are even reported at Sperm banks because there's this clinical element and people don't feel like there's a responsibility for them to tell the donor or the clinic that they've been successful.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then they keep the donor anonymous until 18 because they want to sell more vials for full siblings too.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: They don't want you going directly to the source or the donor, right?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: They're profit-oriented companies.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that was my experience and a little bit of my my thoughts on transparency and and anonymity in the donor space.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it it sounds like there's an aspect of you know you were chosen and you were loved, and you you felt like you missed nothing, I'm assuming growing up.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I missed nothing at all.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was sometimes jealous if other kids had more resources and money, income at home, and two parents who would like, you know, there would always be one parent staying at home and things like that.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I was jealous at that at a younger age, but I later realized that those family setups, the nuclear family, is far from natural compared to a donor setup.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because in nuclear families, you oftentimes have two parents taking care of two kids or something like that.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And and our ancestors, they would have a whole village of people taking care of a whole village of children, like a lot of children, right?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so what happened in many of the nuclear families of my peers is they had a very easy, soft childhood, no challenges at all.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Daddy was always there with money, mommy was always there with time.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: There was not really an issue.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: So they never had to make money, they never had to invest their own time in solving issues or or facing challenges because it was done for them.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: And they later in life found themselves in harder situations to face challenges, to go after real life challenges, and sometimes even created their own problems with with drugs or alcohol or other things.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think we humans, we have a pull towards challenging situations in one way or the other.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're not challenged healthily, we we challenge ourselves sometimes unhealthily, right?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, some sorry, sometimes I go off in my little rabbit holes of of reproduction and like all myself so much to it.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: So growing up that way, meeting your half-siblings, meeting your father, how did that progress into you building the open donor association?
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I met my father at 15 for a vacation on the weekend.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: He always tried to support me in in ways he could, even on a distance.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: So if he knew I was interested in something specific and he would find a certain video or a book about it, he would send it to me.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: To to this day, I just got a book from him today, actually.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: This book is called Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it might be a known book, but I I haven't read it yet.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, to this day, he's still trying to support me on my journey as a man, on my journey as a donor-conceived child.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: He him and I, we talk maybe twice a week, three times a week, about what I do and how I approach dating, how I approach co-parenting and parenting myself, how I approach donation, all those kind of things.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: He's been pretty supportive and always very honest with me when it comes to his own mistakes or things that he wished he he he would have done differently with his first wife and the divorce and things like that.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: He really is very transparent to me to this day.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: So he was like that, you know, since I met him at 15 when I was 18, I spent a gap year with him.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: I enjoyed that connection.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: I enjoyed being around younger half siblings, seeing their family grow.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: I enjoyed having an uncle-like relationship to him at that time.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I call him, you know, I call him by by his first name.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't call him just my donor.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: He's more like a donor father or kind of an uncle to me in a way.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's like a spectrum a donor can be for a child, right?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: And for some of my half siblings or most of my half siblings, he really is just the donor still.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really up to the children individually.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what's so great about the openness or the idea of an open biological father or open donor.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, d I I I came to becoming a donor also because of one relationship that failed unexpectedly, and I realized okay, family structures in a village are much stronger than these when people try to build one strong connection in dating or in marriage with someone, and that is a very easy link to it's just one link, right?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like if that link fails, your whole whole life can fail.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we see it happen to people all the time.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: We see it to women where the man maybe becomes drug addicted or cheats on them.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: We see it with men where the the woman is suddenly after seven years, she wakes up and says, I don't think I want to be with you anymore, I think I want to explore or whatever.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then he loses half his house, is his you know, half his his income or whatever, and pays child support and those things.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: So these these links are very easy to break, and I or or not necessarily easy to break, but it's only one link.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: So if that breaks, your family collapses or cat collapsed.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I had these monogamous relationships, and there was one specific relationship where I was traveling for a week and I was gonna be gone for a bit longer, but just after a week she had a hormonal crash.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: So you might know a little bit about the hormonal roller coaster women can go through when when a man is not there anymore, and it's kind of a natural instinct, right?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because they're lacking this protection and they're lacking something, and and and they have this huge void, and they just feel like they want to disconnect from that man, even.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the case with her.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: She broke up with me when I was gone for a week, and her therapist put her on medication, and she was suddenly on some medication, like antidepressants.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: When she was really fine before her, like when I was there, everything was wonderful.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: She was not even in therapy.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: She went in therapy like during that week.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was gone.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: She went straight into therapy.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then I I came back and she fell in love with me again.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: But she was a bit of a different person because of the antidepressants.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: I could tell, like, okay, this is not exactly who I met before.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this seems a bit she seemed she just seemed different in her ways and how she tr treated me.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Was seemed a bit disconnected or or just not natural to me.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: But she fell in love with me again, wanted to be with me again.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: However, during that time, I had decided that my strongest family setup will not be a nuclear monogamous family setup.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: It will be uh, or it will start with me as a donor because that way I can build a lot of links to a lot of families non-romantically, so that I have a network of children and a network of half siblings for my future children that cannot be broken by one single person.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: That was one of the main reasons I did it.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know there's millions of people that are disappointed by monogamous relationships or even, you know, there's so much hurt in the world.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: But that what you're doing is a beautiful thing.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: And you are offering a solution for couples that can't have children, uh same-sex couples, or if there's infertility between, you know, a man and a woman.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: So you became a donor yourself through the normal channels, I'm assuming a sperm bank somewhere.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you did you see how things were done and want to do it better, or just give us the difference between average sperm bank and the open donor association?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: So when I started as an open donor, I quickly realized that sperm banks weren't an option for me for tax reasons because if you're a German citizen and you travel enough, you don't have to pay any taxes.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you could basically go from one country to the other.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: People do it in Europe or in other places all the time.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: You can set up your company in one country that you travel to sometimes, but as long as your center of life is not in one place, you don't have to pay taxes.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: And most sperm banks, they want you in one place for six months or longer so that they can harvest you well, right?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because it has a lot of initial costs to be set up as a donor, like the tests and everything.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that was interestingly the the main reason at first why I decided, you know, I'm not gonna go through a sperm bank.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: I did more research and I looked into the open donor market.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: I would say back then, without the Open Donor Association, it was more of a Wild West.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Reproduction is still a Wild West, and I hope reproduction will always stay your Wild West.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: I really don't hope that, you know, there's like people are regulated on their reproductive opportunities.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Some countries try that more, some less.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: The US is pretty good, you know, open about reproduction.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really enforce a lot of suppression on people's reproductive rights.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so I realized very quickly that as an open donor, you cannot only offer to be cost effective, which is one of the reasons people look into one of the reasons people look into open donation is because if you go with a sperm bank donor, you normally also go through a clinic and then you have to do IUI, you have to do all the tests, you have to do IBF.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: So one single cycle of donor, you know, anonymous donor sperm can cost$5,000,$6,000.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you do not know who the donor is, you do not know his exact lifestyle, you can see he's not a terribly unhealthy guy.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: So they have baseline standards, of course.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like they do not work with everyone, which I think is good, but you do not know what this person looks like as an adult sometimes.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: You can't talk to them, you can't ask them questions.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: They might be open ID, which means they're open for you know sharing their identity, but they they might not be open for contact.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I've heard that before too, but has been pretty traumatic and sad for some donor-conceived children that reached out to an open ID donor and he then said, I'm not interested in talking to you.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: I have my own family, my own kids.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want any contact.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Please do not contact me again.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was just open to giving my identity, so you know who I am now, and that's all I want to do.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that's of course sad for a donor-conceived child that's like very excited to learn more about their heritage, meet their half siblings and all that.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: And these donors are just like irresponsible and sometimes didn't really know what they were doing in their college years.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: They just wanted some extra money.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the main way sperm banks attract donors.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I also get those advertisements because the algorithm knows what I do, and they always advertise purely around money.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's of course a little bit is helping families on the side, but it's mostly about oh, you can make$1,500,$2,000 a month by being a sperm donor in in your area and your city.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: So you can imagine the kind of people it attracts in a way too.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so I have found that there's a spectrum of open donors.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's really terrible open donors, and and sadly, they have been picked up by the media the most.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: These could be men who go after child custody suddenly, or men who try to make everything sexual around donation, always try to have sexual contact, or men who are irresponsible about who they donate to and how many people they donate to.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: They don't keep track, they go to sperm banks and they donate openly.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: So there's bad open donors that I wouldn't necessarily recommend.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: But then there's also wonderful open donors who are so much better than a sperm bank donor option or anonymous donor option.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what the open donor association basically does.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: We we find those men or men who want to be like that.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: We help them become better donors, we act like an agency for them where they can charge their own fees or shipping fees or open donor fees, whatever they want to the recipients, and we help them become a great donor and connect to recipients.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so fascinated.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: So your website is opendonorassociation.com.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: And can you can you tell us how it works?
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like if if you mentioned shipping, things like that.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: So if someone was interested in becoming a donor, because you have on your website, you have four recipients and four donors.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: If someone was interested in being vetted to become a donor for open donor association, how would they go about that?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a sign-up form on our website where donors can fill out basic information so that we can see if they would be a decent candidate or not.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Health and finances are usually the two most important things because if you want to be an open donor, you either have to invest a lot of time and effort, or if you want to be part of the open donor association, you have to contribute to what we do and how we do it.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the reason a lot of men choose to become open donors is because they can choose the recipients as well.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: So while Spermbanks will just give you$100 per donation, you can, as an open donor, charge more for one, but you can also choose the recipients you decide to work with.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: So some people might say I only want to work with women under 35 for health reasons, or maybe I only want to work with people of a certain ethnicity, which women do as well, right?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Recipients also choose their donors based on ethnicity, which, you know, I don't I don't judge.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think everyone should reproduce in whatever way they want.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: I personally, I donate to all ethnicities.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: But it's really up to the people involved.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And their choice.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so they can say, I don't want to donate to this person who seems crazy or disrespectful.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to donate to this person who seems like she has health issues or is obese or might smoke or might drink.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can ask your recipients for blood tests and make sure that they're also healthy when you move forward.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: So all these things make that pretty attractive to many men who want to be donors and who who want to leave an impact for their own future children because those are going to be the half siblings, right?
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the donor can see future child children.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so they they sign up through a form and then we s we look at their application and we see, okay, is this a match?
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like if if you, for example, are in a country where you can't do shipping and where there's really no demand or we don't get any recipient demands, let's say someone signs up in India or Uganda, then we're not going to be able to support him on his donor journey.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: But if someone is in the US and he looks healthy and he's, you know, we we ask for a fitness picture to see, okay, is this person generally on the healthier side?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Then they can go into a video call and I try to understand their motivation.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Is their motivation a good one?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Are they just trying to make money or are they just trying to have sex?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Things like that.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, I try to filter out.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: I can do a lot, but at the end of the day, the reputation is what counts.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: So if someone ever messes up on the way, he's gone, he's out of the open donor association.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: He has to do his own thing.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: So there's not never a hundred percent safety or certainty, but it's better if you work with a donor who has a track record of 20 healthy families and they're all excited about him.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then he he, if he wants to become a golden standard donor, which are the donors that we refer to recipients, we also have a general community.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: In that general community, there are like retired donors or donors who do it full-time.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like some donors, even free donors or low-cost donors, they do nothing else than you know be a donor.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: I know some donors who saved up a lot of money and now they've been donating for three years, just numbers maxing is what we call it.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: They try to donate as much as they can.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: We have some of those guys in the general community.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then the golden standard is for men who don't really have the time to attract a lot of leads, to understand the whole marketplace and the Facebook groups and get along with all the admins to make sure they're not banned in the Facebook groups and things like that.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: And for that, they need to have some tests, like we make sure their physical health is good.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: They might go through a psychological evaluation.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: Then we ask for SDI, SDD tests, spermiogram, genetic carrier testing, some of the basics for the golden standard.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: We also have a platinum standard, which is for men who want to kind of have more recipients and higher quality recipients.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: For that, there's also more tests required because the better recipients will usually ask for more tests and have more expectations as well.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's generally how it works.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: We set up a portfolio for them.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: The recipients can purchase that portfolio on the website, or they can find them in the Facebook groups that we manage.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: They can also find them on other platforms, like we manage just the baby accounts and stuff for our donors, so that we really make them accessible to the public or to people who want to, you know, choose a donor or find a donor.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: So the testing that needs to be done, the medical testing, is that at the cost of the donor?
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, in our case, is at the cost of the donor.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Again, our it's it's very different.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes donors go to sperm banks, have the testing done at sperm banks, and then say or tell the sperm bank, I don't want to be at sperm bank, I want to be an open donor, which is legal.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, it's at expense of the sperm bank.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then sometimes they start as a donor in the general community and they attract recipients themselves, and these recipients pay for STICD tests or for spermiograms sometimes too.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I think that if you are serious about your work as a donor, and these tests are not that expensive.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Genetic carrier testing is a bit expensive, it's like$500.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: But SCI CD is normally free or like$100, and then the spermiogram is another$100.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's also a good sign if a donor says I want to invest in my health, I want to invest in my testing, I'm taking this very seriously, and I, you know, want to create healthy lives.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: So just for the audiences and my own information, how how long a sample is collected and then the shipping, it's shipped to the recipient?
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a clinic situation?
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: Can you tell people that are ignorant to this, like myself, how it works?
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: And how long is a sample good for that kind of thing?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, shipping is one of the most interesting options because it has just recently kind of been discovered by open donors more and more.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I talked about it very openly.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Many donors they wouldn't want to share what they know about shipping because they don't want the reproductive competition.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: They, you know, sometimes you could call it competition, you could call it mate suppression.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's different ways of looking at it.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: I talk about it very openly because I I feel like I'm the best.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not that worried about competition.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Very confident in that way.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: But but I I share that and it's basically clinical grade extender.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's called TYB.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: The most common is TYB sperm extender from Irvine Scientific, that you can normally only get if you are a sperm bank or fertility clinic, but there's also third-party providers that can sell it to you, like baby ASAP, or donor home delivery.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Those are more on the expensive end, so they're making a good profit with that.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the Open Donor Association, we also have we work directly with the professor who uh supplies our donors with that because he can, because he has the licenses to purchase it.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's just Irvine Scientific, they just ask for the licenses, and so he can also sell that to us.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I basically am able to purchase it in bulk, just like other donors in the Open Donor Association can do so too.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that extender is mixed with the sperm sample.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's a yolk in there in the extender, gentamicine in the extender, and glucose, some other things in the extender as well, but those are the main things that make sure the sperm gets extra energy to survive longer than usually outside of a body, sperm would survive for maybe an hour or two, and then the quality it goes pretty down.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: You will see some swimmers still alive even after a day, but most will be will be dead by then.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you use the clinical grade extender and mix it with the extender, the samples can survive for up to 96 hours if you have the right cooling method, if you cool it correctly and not too fast or not too slow.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: And if you put it in a cooled container or in a fridge, it can the sperm samples can survive for up to 96 hours.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Then recipients can receive it.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: I usually ship with overnight shipping, like next morning or or noon or afternoon, so that it's only 24 hours, then they can warm it up to body temperature just by holding the bile or the syringe, and then they can use it just as they would use a fresh sample.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if you work with the really healthy donor, even if let's say half of the sperm swimmers are dead after shipping, you are still working with the much higher potency, much higher MOT.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: MOT means how many million mulch sperm swimmers there are in there.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: Sperm banks might send between 10 and 30.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a healthy donor in shipping, you might have between 100 and 300, something like that.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: A fresh sample could be like between 200 and 600 MOT.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: So it's much higher than what Sperm banks ship out.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: They profit maximize and they do the freezing and thawing, which you don't have to do if you do a fresh sample shipment.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, those are then sent to the recipients and they can just use it like a fresh sample.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, if they track well and if they time well, the success rates are just as high as an in-person donation.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: Incredible.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: So fascinating.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: So and does your organization help the recipient know how to track, know, you know, instructions are given, all the things.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: Are are you guys helping coordinate when the donation arrives and you know when the recipient would be ready for it, you know, for the ovulation purposes?
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: Do you guys help coordinate all that?
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: So the conversion itself between recipients and donors, we don't do, we don't get involved in that.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: We connect recipients with the donors and we educate and train the donors so that they can help because you know they do want the success at the end of the day.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: They want to have a successful recipient.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: And a donor who's been in the industry for, let's say, only three months or four months, he will know a lot about how it works compared to a recipient who's doing it for the first time.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I always have a lot to share with recipients when I go on video calls with them, and I can basically teach a lot too, educate a lot too, because I've seen so many different situations, and they would never be able to collect all that information themselves because they're not going to be trying for two years, or they're not going to be in the industry for two years.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they'll they'll be trying for a couple months and then they're gonna have their child and then they're gonna try again.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, whatever knowledge I collect and the data we have, we have a big group chat where we talk about everything.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: We have weekly campfire calls because there's a lot to it, right?
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's knowledge about certain clinics, which clinics are good, which clinics are bad, things like that.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: We we talk about, we we share the information and we put it in our school community for our donors to access anytime.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: So if they feel like they need any advice or support, they can go there.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: But with things like tracking ovulation, I honestly believe that there's a certain amount of healthy natural selection because it's so easy to access that information through AI nowadays.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm really worried if I feel like a woman is not able to find out these super basic things and and ask these simple questions that she should know if she's trying to become a mother, right?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like being a mother, there's a lot you need to know to be a mother, or you should know to be a mother.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I don't feel like we should be in in the position to make it work for for for everyone.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's really up to the to the people to do the work themselves too.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I just want to kind of circle back and talk a little bit before I have to let you go and respect your time.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: But open donor association, your your setup and your purpose is to have open donation, have access, you know, you're you're vetting the donors to make sure of their health, their test results, all these things.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: And you you mentioned financial stability and intelligence.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: I saw, you know, I looked through some of the donors, and it everyone on there looked amazing, obviously.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and just the openness for the child as the child grows, that he he or she would have access to the information about his genetics and and things like that.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's really the fact that you get more transparency, you get healthier donors, you get a stronger network of other recipients, too.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: So those are really the main three reasons people choose to work with me and the other donors, is they say number one, health.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: We know that you're healthier than a sperm back donor who works a very stressful, let's say, a job in the office, and he sits all day and all he doesn't really think about his reproductive health because he never gets to know the children.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: So he has a different kind of incentive than someone who knows, okay, this is going to impact this child, and I'm going to get pictures of the child, and I want the child to be healthy.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then the transparency openness is much bigger because you could ask an open donor anything and you can message him anytime.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like you have your customer support, is basically the donor himself.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third big thing for my recipients is that they know the other recipients I work with are selected too.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're not just anyone.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: So those are people that they would like to connect to themselves at some point in life, or that those will people will be people with healthy families, so they don't have to worry that their half sibling or the half siblings of their child will be in like neglected families or you know, crazy poor families, or families with with mental health issues and things like that.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not every every donor does.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: Some donors are more and some less selective, but that's also something you can discuss with your donor individually too.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Daniel, you very much are a hormone hero, and you are providing a service that is is very needed.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, for someone like myself who easily had two children, and I know what what those babies mean to me.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: They're not babies anymore.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: They're your age, but but the service you're providing is just incredible.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I really appreciate you explaining it to the to our audience.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think it will be helpful.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: You you know, even you never know how many people you're going to reach that this would be the answer for.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was great talking to you.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Daniel.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening to Hormone Heroes.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: Take a moment to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: While you are there, help us spread the word by leaving a rating and a review.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: If you would like to share your bioidentical hormone story or need help finding a physician in your area, please email us at drkelly at hormoneheroes.org.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's D-R-K-E-L-L-Y at H O R M O N E H E R O E S dot org.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: We want you to be a hormone hero.