The world’s first-ever HIV positive sperm bank is accepting donations in New Zealand.
The project, called Sperm Positive, has launched with male donors who are living with HIV but have an undetectable viral load. This means they have received antiretroviral treatment and the level of HIV in their blood is so low it cannot be detected through blood tests.
Although they are technically still HIV-positive, they cannot transmit the virus to sexual partners or children via their sperm.
“An HIV positive sperm bank is perfectly safe,” Dr Mark Thomas, an infectious disease physician at the University of Auckland, explains on the project’s website.
”An HIV patient who is on treatment and has an undetectable viral load has no virus in their blood or genital secretions, including their sperm, and can’t pass the infection to anyone else.“
As Sperm Positive describes it: “They can give you their eyes, their hair, their cheeky laugh. But they can’t give you HIV.”
The online sperm bank will effectively work as a match-making service to pair up donors and prospective recipients. It’s worth highlighting that it will be made explicitly clear that the donors have HIV, but have an undetectable viral load thanks to ongoing treatment.
For the complete article from the IFLScience website, click here
