Hope for HIV-positive men who want to father children

From DallasVoice.com

Health
Hope for HIV-positive men who want to father children
By Ben Briscoe
Jun 11, 2008 - 3:38:39 PM

California company’s new service providing surrogacy, egg donation to HIV-positive men who want children sparks controversy

Don Maison of AIDS Services of Dallas: “These [HIV-positive parents] are just as loving and just as capable as anyone else.”

A California company is offering a new, controversial service that provides surrogacy and egg donation to HIV-positive men who want to use their own sperm to produce children.

“Everyone should have the opportunity to create a family,” said Gail Taylor, president and founder of Growing Generations, LLC. “This just includes one more category of people who may not have had this opportunity prior to the science being available.”

The scientific technique used to protect the future child and the surrogate from HIV can be so complicated that even Taylor likes to refer to the company’s medical experts instead of trying to sum it up.

But in a nutshell, not every sperm in seminal fluid is infected with HIV. That means that scientists can go fishing for HIV-free sperm in a larger sample using a testing process called Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction, or RT-PCR.

The overall process takes about two years and costs about $150,000 to cover everything from medical and legal fees to paying the surrogate.

While Taylor says everyone should have the opportunity to create a family, not everyone agrees.

Just hours after the press release went out, both HIV and parenting blogs tackled the topic. The most extensive, and harshest, discussion of the new service was on surromomsonline.com.

Poster Mommyto2+twins has been the biggest critic, writing, “Unbelievable … and are they volunteering to raise these children when they lose their fathers??? Not everyone is lucky enough to live long lives with this disease! Anything to make a buck though.”

Others simply say that too many issues come along with being HIV positive and raising children.

While there hasn’t been much research done on HIV-infected parents, the few studies out take a look at some of these issues. Some of the studies show that 21 percent of parents with HIV have been hospitalized in the last six months, one-third of parents with HIV avoided hugging and kissing their children to some degree because of infection fears, and by 2000, parents with HIV passed on leaving behind nearly 80,000 children.

Don Maison has worked closely with parents infected with the virus for years as president and CEO of AIDS Services of Dallas, an organization that provides housing to those infected with HIV. He says these claims don’t hold water.

“Yes, there are some issues to raising children [when a parent has] HIV,” Maison said. “But these parents are just as loving and just as capable as anyone else.”

Maison went on to say, “There is no difference between them and a parent with heart disease, and you would never question whether someone with heart disease was worthy of having children.”

Taylor agrees.

“The facts are that people are living with HIV for longer and healthier lives than ever before,” she said. “We’re just trying to help them fulfill their dreams of parenthood, like anyone else.”

For more information on the process visit growinggenerations.com.

E-mail Briscoe@dallasvoice.com