That is, literally, cold comfort. Typically, semen is kept in canisters and stored, frozen, in tanks of liquid nitrogen. Though it deteriorates slightly over time, sperm can be preserved safely for more than a decade. In the past, most men who banked sperm were about to have vasectomies or undergo chemotherapy, or had hazardous jobs - cops, hockey players. Though servicemen aren’t stampeding to sperm banks, significant numbers have made inquiries. “It’s a very practical way of dealing with concerns about chemical warfare, injury or death,” says Barbara Raboy, executive director of Oakland’s Sperm Bank of California. “I feel the war will give a boost to sperm banks.”
It already has. Since the start of the gulf war, a number of uniformed depositors have left something behind at SBC; California Cryobank in Los Angeles has gone from no requests from military personnel to about 25 a week. In the last four months, the San Diego office of the Fertility Center of California has taken about 300 calls from servicemen and their wives or girlfriends, a 900 percent increase. (There is talk of servicewomen harvesting their eggs, but the process is more difficult than collecting semen.) To date, sperm warfare has been centered in California - elsewhere, some banks report more queries from the media than from the military - but it could escalate. Patriotic-minded facilities are even offering military discounts. The Fertility Center Laboratory in San Antonio, Texas, is charging servicemen $250 for two years of storage (civilians pay $400 annually), but no one has taken FCL up on the offer. Says a spokesman for nearby Brooks Air Force Base, “People here are kind of shy.”
Modesty may be a deterrent for many, but military men who do decide to bank their sperm - often at the urging of their wives - are dealing with a more significant emotion: terror. “Some of these guys are feeling not only frightened but rather helpless in terms of being able to change events,” says Dr. Charles Grob, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California Irvine Medical Center. “This gives them a sense of some control. They’ve managed to kind of defy their own mortality by leaving something of themselves behind that will live.” Most servicemen are still reluctant to exercise an option presented by the brave new world. California Cryobank CEO Vincent Wayne is sympathetic. “You don’t want to be the prophet of doom and gloom,” he says. “You want to paint the positive side and say, ‘If we have to fight it, everybody’s going to come home’. "
