In Brief

Made in America: Sperm One of Country's Hottest Exports

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Sperm cell fertilizing eggs.
An illustration of a sperm cell penetrating an egg. (Image credit: Jezper, Shutterstock)

Sperm is a hot commodity, and when these sexy swimmers come from American lads they're even more so.

The United States may be one of the world's biggest exporters of sperm, according to The Verge. Most of the sperm served up at the Seattle Sperm Bank gets sent overseas to Denmark, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. The world's largest sperm bank, California Cryobank, exports 10 percent of its goods internationally.

Why? Ethnic diversity, for one. But perhaps even more alluring are the tracking and testing. "The U.S. has some of the world's highest standards for disease testing and donor screening. The FDA defines sperm as human tissue, and regulates it much as it does the donation of organs," the Verge reports.

Read more at The Verge.

Jeanna Bryner
Managing editor, Scientific American

Jeanna Bryner is managing editor of Scientific American. Previously she was editor in chief of Live Science and, prior to that, an editor at Scholastic's Science World magazine. Bryner has an English degree from Salisbury University, a master's degree in biogeochemistry and environmental sciences from the University of Maryland and a graduate science journalism degree from New York University. She has worked as a biologist in Florida, where she monitored wetlands and did field surveys for endangered species, including the gorgeous Florida Scrub Jay. She also received an ocean sciences journalism fellowship from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She is a firm believer that science is for everyone and that just about everything can be viewed through the lens of science.