Johannes Appleseed

It was a short piece in the Wall Street Journal the other day that caught my eye. It's the kind of news clip fodder that late night comedians would made use of in their monologues if there wasn't a writers' strike. But since I'm not unionized, I'll do what they would do: make something of it. I work for free, so I don't even have to cross a picket line.

Under the heading Netherlands we get:

Prolific Sperm Donor Banned by Court

"A Dutch court on Friday banned a man from donating any more of his sperm after he fathered at least 550 children in the Netherlands and other countries and misled prospective parents about the number of offspring he helped to conceive."

Hollywood may have producers, but no one like this guy.

I don't know if it was Robin Williams or not who gave us the math equation that if you're "one in a million" and you're in China with say a population of 2,000,000,000  there are 2,000 of you.

I don't know what the other countries might have been where Mr. 550's sperm was used, but let's say they were Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Denmark. The total population of these countries along with the Netherlands in 2023 is pegged at 24,073,833. If all 550 attempts at conception achieved a birth, then 1 in 44,000 people in these countries are related to this guy.

550 conceptions yield a lot of Father's Day cards. The post office must have to make a special delivery to this guy's mailbox. And how do you sail past the 25 insemination limit the Netherlands is writing into its law with 550? What does this guy do? Keep changing his name? On forms asking for an occupation, does this guy write "Inseminator"? "Creator"? "Sperm Whale"?

"The court noted that under Dutch guidelines, sperm donors are allowed to produce a maximum of 25 children with 12 mothers and that the donor lied to prospective parents about his donation history." You can say that again. And he lied often, it seems. 550 is 22 x 25. That is exceeding the speed limit by a wide margin.

There are genetically a lot of people who may not only resemble each other, but they're going to get the same scores on standardized testing and probably go into the same occupations, eliminating whatever shortage there might be of that profession. Facial recognition at an airport might get flooded with false positive readings. Flights will be missed.

There's a Peanuts cartoon from October 17, 1960 where Lucy, skipping rope tells her brother Linus that, "there were two new babies born on our block this week." Lucy further tells Linus, "it's all part of the population explosion." Linus looks confused. "Really" he replies. "I didn't hear a thing."

Seems the people in Holland didn't hear a thing either. Mr. 550 cannot have done this all on his own, could he?

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