Proxy Fathers

In the last few years, artificial insemination of human beings has become a highly successful science. Most difficult step has been the finding of suitable proxy fathers. Last week Dr. Ivy Albert Pelzman of Georgetown University School of Medicine said that he is starting an agency for proxy fathers in Washington. Blonds, brunets, redheads, Jews, Catholics and Protestants will be on the list, he said, and a prospective mother can have her child influenced in every physical respect except sex. Heredity and background of all candidates are thoroughly investigated. Since the human male attains his highest fertility during his twenties, Dr. Pelzman's present list of 15 is drawn mostly from medical students and interns who are glad to get the $25 fee per insemination. Operation of the bureau will be very simple. Dr. Pelzman will merely collect to order tubes of fresh, fertile spermatozoa and deliver them to a gynecologist.

Process of insemination is equally simple. With a syringe a gynecologist introduces a few drops of semen directly into the cervical canal, lower part of the uterus. Best time for artificial insemination is the fertile period occurring from ten days to two weeks after menstruation begins. More complicated are the legal arrangements. Both husband and wife must sign a joint agreement permitting the wife to bear the child of a third person. The identity of the donor is kept secret, and if he is married his wife must give her written consent as well. Other practical suggestions made by Drs. Frances Isobel Seymour and Alfred Koerner of Manhattan : 1) A physician should never consent to use a relative as donor. Too many emotional complications may follow. 2) A donor's blood group should correspond to that of the husband so that legal disproof of the child's paternity is impossible without presentation of the double-signed agreement.

Most successful case of artificial in semination, said Dr. Pelzman, was a Chicago woman who bore two artificially conceived children, has the constant pleasure of hearing her unknowing friends say: "They look just like their father."

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