"Certain health and behaviour criteria such as drug use, exposure to foreign blood or body fluids were not adequately assessed as part of the donor screening process", advised a Health Canada spokesperson. She was responding to the alarm raised -- yet again -- to the fact that the largest importer of donor sperm in Canada has time and again imported semen from foreign sperm banks not screened adequately for infectious diseases that include HIV, hetatitis and syphilis.

Such importers are not required to be registered, and as such it appears that Health Canada has no real authority over them. Clearly, legislation requires upgrading to protect people vulnerable to the prospect of future problems relating to their offspring born through IVF with donor sperm.

The fact that this not-fully-screened product is then distributed to fertility clinics and physicians across the country to be used on patients attempting pregnancy through in-vitro fertilization is obviously more than adequate reason for screeching alarm. The company involved is Outreach Health Services, which has failed annual safety inspections with Health Canada resulting from serious violations of legislation and regulations whose purpose is obviously meant to protect Canadians using donor sperm.

The problem here is that it is illegal in Canada to pay donors for their sperm. As such, the growing IV fertilization market screams for donor sperm. It's fine if a friend or someone well known to the recipient steps forward to fill that need in individual instances, not so fine when people are depending on donor sperm that has been inadequately tested to ensure safety. In 2011 and 2009 this company earned "non-compliant" ratings, as it did for the current year.

The company pledged on numerous occasions that it would cease distribution of non-compliant semen to fertility clinics and doctors until such time that foreign sperm banks "re-qualified" donors, but it proceeded to continue distributing that very same donor sperm regardless.