When you're building a family with donor sperm, quality and safety aren't negotiable—they're the foundation. Behind every vial available for purchase lies a rigorous process designed to protect recipients, ensure healthy outcomes for children, and uphold ethical best practices. That's why very few donor applicants make it through screening: MySpermBank only approves ~1% of donors.
Why Screening Is So Stringent
1) Safety: Infectious Disease Testing Is Mandated
In the U.S., the FDA requires donor eligibility determination before donor sperm can be used, including testing for transmissible infections (e.g., HIV, hepatitis B/C, syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia).
What this means for you: Only donors who clear repeated infectious disease tests and meet strict eligibility rules can proceed—reducing risks for recipients and children.
2) Genetic Responsibility: Carrier Screening & Family History
Modern donor programs conduct extensive genetic screening and require multi generation family histories to minimize the chance of passing on heritable conditions. ASRM explicitly recommends genetic risk assessment (along with psychosocial counseling) as part of standard donor evaluation.
Why it's strict: Even if a candidate looks healthy, expanded carrier testing can uncover silent recessive risks; banks exclude donors when genetic findings or family histories raise concern.
3) Semen Quality: It Must Survive Freezing & Thawing
It's not enough to have a decent semen analysis—donor sperm must perform after cryopreservation. Many otherwise healthy applicants are rejected because their samples don't meet strict thresholds for count, motility, morphology, and post thaw viability at volumes that enable reliable clinical use. This is a principal reason acceptance rates hover in the low single digits.
Why this matters: Most inseminations use frozen, thawed specimens. If a candidate's sperm doesn't tolerate freezing (or can't produce consistent, high quality vials), the bank cannot responsibly include them in the donor program.
4) Psychological & Ethical Readiness
ASRM emphasizes psychoeducational counseling and psychosocial assessments for both donors and recipients, including motivations for donating, consent to identity release policies, expectations around possible future contact, and the long term implications for donor conceived people. These steps are part of best practice screening—not an optional extra.
Why this matters: The counseling safeguards informed consent and child centric ethics in an era where DNA testing can reveal genetic connections unexpectedly. Programs that follow ASRM guidance maintain durable records and plan for future information requests.
What "Only the Best" Means for Recipients
- Consistency: Approved donors must demonstrate repeatable, high quality post thaw performance, not just a one off good sample.
- Risk reduction: Integrated FDA/CDC/ASRM screening reduces infectious, genetic, and ethical risks in line with national practice guidance.
- Transparency & ethics: Programs aligned with ASRM standards incorporate counseling and robust data stewardship (medical/genetic info retention) to support donor conceived individuals over the long term.
Key Takeaways
- Acceptance is intentionally low ~1% so that only the best performing, safest donor samples are offered.
- Strict screening integrates FDA infectious disease rules and ASRM guidance on medical, genetic, and psychosocial evaluation.
- Post thaw performance—not just baseline semen quality—is a critical gatekeeper to protect outcomes.