I’ll take Johnny Depp please!
Is that the way the clients of California Cryobank sperm bank order their baby makers?

Apparently the California Cryobank has come up with the idea of matching up their sperm donors with famous celebrity faces. Are they genius entrepreneurs helping their clients make a tough decision of who they should pick as their baby daddy? Or are they just trying to make more money than other sperm banks by claiming their donors are celebrity look alikes? Or both?

How does this sperm bank match their donor’s faces with celebrities? With high tech face-recognition? Nope!
Employees of Cryobank sit around a table and put the donor’s pictures up on a screen and argue which celebrity looks like that donor the most. When they come to a consensus, they add that information to the donor’s file, and then the donor’s name goes into a huge data bank. Clients can then search the data base for a donor by which celebrity they want their child to look like.

Although clients are not allowed to see the donor’s ACTUAL picture by law, clients can  search for a potential donor by picking out a celebrity name.

Too superficial?
How will the general public weigh in on this?

I wonder if someone will pass up a donor with a better IQ, for a donor that looks like Mario Lopez? I also wonder if people out there will pick a celebrity look alike in hopes on trying to cash in on their offspring down the line, especially if their child ends up as a dead ringer of a celebrity.

Hey Kate Gosselin, this has your name all over it! Only eight kids? What’s the big deal? The Duggars have you beat by a landslide! It can be your new show! “Kate Plus Eight Plus Elvis!”
And remember Kate, there is a plus side besides the new show…whatever donor you pick… can’t take money out of your bank account! 

Now I have seen just about every way there is to make a buck in the ol’ USA, and a lot of it ain’t too pretty. And there are some wackos out there who may try to claim that their child is the child of an actual celebrity. I wouldn’t put it past them. Far fetched? Perhaps.

But take the case of a women trying to collect millions from Keanu Reeves. She is claiming that he is the father of at least one of her four adult children.  *snicker*
Even though Reeves took a DNA test to prove that he wasn’t the father, and he also said he never met the women, she still isn’t backing off. 
What did Reeves have to say about this whole ordeal? 
Rest assured, he didn’t say, ”eeeeeexcellent!” *snicker*

Of course Cryobank does have a disclaimer to cover their butts in this overly litigious world:

“No celebrity is meant as an exact match for any donor, nor should you assume that your future children will look like any celebrity listed.”

NBC’s Today Show covered the sperm bank story, and on this video, you can see the employees sitting around a table with the donor’s picture on a screen and trying to figure out who the donors most resemble. Man, where do I sign up for this cream puff gig?

Scott Brown, communication manager of the California Cryobank said to NBC TODAY,

“It’s not that our donors look like celebrities, it’s that celebrities look like our donors,”

Oh! I see what he did there…. he is SO crafty!

You can also pick a young or older version of the celebrity too. Perhaps you would like a young Sean Connery as OO7, or the older more sophisticated Sean Connery. The choice is yours!

There are MANY stars as well as athletes listed in their data base. And let’s not forget musicians and the less than famous celebs. You can pick from Eddie Van Halen to Jackass reality star Stev-O!
I kid you not, he is on the list.
Wow, seriously…if anyone picks the Steve-O look alike, I am afraid I just don’t understand, unless he is a nuclear physicist.

 
So are there people out there opposed to this celebrity look alike baby daddy factory? YES.

Some snippets from NBC’s TODAY,

The program has its share of critics, especially in the bioethics world. University of Albany professor Bonnie Steinbock bashed California Cryobank’s celebrity-match program on CNN, saying, “There’s something strange about a culture that has stratified rigid types of beauty where everyone looks alike; now they’re trying to create children through who the actor of the moment is.”

Brown’s defense:

Not so, says Brown. While the process may seem superficial, it is actually extremely helpful in guiding prospective parents through a stressful and often confusing time, he asserts.

“Seems superficial”?
Some people would argue that it is superficial. But don’t people have the right to choose which donor they want for whatever reason, since they are the ones paying for it? And what if it does help the client choose?
Take the opinion of a perspective Mom who was trying to pick a donor:

“I’m flipping through the catalog with a friend of mine, feeling like I was about to recruit a basketball team, because it was just all stats.” And while she whittled down her list, the Cryobank couldn’t show her a picture of the donor — but it could tell her one of her finalists resembled Freddie Prinze Jr.
“For me, that clinched it right then and there,” she said. “I’ve always found him attractive!”

Freddie Prinze Jr.? Really? That clinched it for her? To each their own.

So matching a face to a donor may actually make some clients feel more at ease about who they pick, or actually help them to decide who to pick. I hope people have the good sense to pick donors with good qualities, rather than picking a donor because they like Orlando Bloom.
But then again, this is the land of the SUPER DUPER superficial, so nothing would surprise me.

I wonder if Cryobank’s business will be booming?

I can see it now…
Mothers with their kids are at the playground and one mother says to another,
“wow your little boy really looks like Leonardo DiCaprio! Any relation?” 

The proud Mom says, “Well no, it was donor #09756-QL5, we were really big fans of the movie Titanic, so that’s why we went with him”.

I guess if there is one guy who is a real dead ringer of a handsome celebrity, he will be in big demand and asked to come back quite often. There can be a panic at Cryobank if they run out!  What happens then?

It may go something like this:

“OMG! We are fresh out of the Ryan Reynolds look alike! Get 9087-K490L on the phone stat! Tell him we have some new vids and magazines! Yeah I know he has been in twice a day for the past month and he’s a bit tender… Chain him down again if you have to, until he puts out. We are in the baby making business people!”

MORE???

I guess in the long run it can become quite a lucrative and fun “job” if you are a celebrity look alike donor. What guy wouldn’t want this gig? At $50- $75 a pop, I am surprised that there is a job shortage for men in the US! Hell, they ain’t getting paid for doing it at home!

Tough luck for all you donors out there who look like Gary Busey (sorry Gary) or OJ Simpson. (not sorry OJ)

I imagine their “stuff” wouldn’t have too many takers and is probably passed up for the gloopus of a more hunkier looking celebrity look alike.

But things may not work out exactly the way you have planned. Even though you picked out your favorite celeb look alike, don’t forget there is a 50/50 chance that your child may be a girl and you may end up with a pretty scary looking child! And I am more than sure that Cryobank does not issue refunds for fuglies.

Very Scary Indeed!

I bet some clients just won’t really care if the donor they picked has only two brain cells….
Just as long as their celebrity knock off looks good in a tux! *snicker*
Only in America!

Source: Queen