“Last summer, Alexander McKinnon was always feeling tired,” Adam Popescu writes over at Bloomberg. ‘I would lie on the couch at 2 in the afternoon and fall asleep, he says. The founder of a biotech startup in Boston, he initially thought it was the byproduct of a demanding job, but as time passed, his exhaustion didn’t subside. By September his doctor had run a blood test and found his ‘super fatigue’ was tied to low levels of testosterone. McKinnon was prescribed steroids to boost his energy. The trade-off was that the injections would severely reduce his sperm count. McKinnon, 32, and his wife weren’t ready to start a family, but they didn’t want to risk their ability to do so in the future. ‘That’s when I froze my sperm,’ he says. Sperm banks have been around for decades, but the advent in the past several years of low-cost chemical preservatives administered at home, which can extend the life of a sample for days, lowered the barriers to access by eliminating the awkward trip to a clinic or doctor’s office. Changing attitudes among health-conscious men are helping create a mini industry of direct-to-consumer startups that take semen by mail for storage and offer reproductive health analysis through an app. McKinnon used a do-it-yourself kit he ordered from a company called Legacy. It comes with a small plastic cup like the ones at the doctor, a vial of pink fluid that acts as the preservative, a rugged army-green zippered container and a padlock to prevent tampering during transit. After collecting his sample, McKinnon dropped it off for overnight shipping. Legacy is among the biggest US startups in a growing male infertility market estimated at $4 billion a year. The New York-based company has 40,000 customers and is backed by $50 million from venture capitalists and celebrity investors including Justin Bieber.” Adam Popescu, “Sperm freezing is a new hot market for startups,” Bloomberg.
