Male Order

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Aleks Krotoski investigates sperm donors and the unofficial online fertility market.

Aleks Krotoski investigates sperm donors and why people put themselves and their future children at risk by going online to find them.

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Male Order: 10. A Better Way?

10. A Better Way?

BBC Radio 4 - Male Order, 10. A Better Way?

Whose job is it to regulate the unregulated online sperm donor market?

The internet has let the genie out of the bottle. So how are regulators and companies trying to push it back in?

In the final episode of her ten-part investigation of the online sperm donor marketplace, Dr Aleks Krotoski looks for a way to make this network safe for the recipients, the donors, and ultimately, the donor-conceived children. 

The internet has opened up the door to these informal connections, and so who is responsible what happens there? Is it Facebook, where the majority of the exchanges take place? Is it for the regulator to crack down on illegal trades? Or is it up to the criminal justice system to draw boundaries around this activity?

Aleks discovers that, as with so many aspects of our lives, the digital revolution has pushed us right up to the boundaries of what we can and cannot do - and how quickly good intentions combined with tools to rule the world can get lost in selfish goals.

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