Sperm

May 25, 2007

Salad dressing semen spawns trouble

WHEATON, Ill. - A judge has ordered a 17-year-old to pay a $750 fine and perform 120 hours of community service for contaminating salad dressing with semen and returning it to a suburban Chicago high school's cafeteria.

DuPage County Judge Terence Sheen also placed Marco Castro on two years probation Wednesday and ordered him to write a letter of apology to Wheaton North High School officials. Castro must complete his community service work for an agency that works with AIDS patients.

Sheen called the prank "beyond stupid." "If you prove to me you're worthy of another chance, in two years, then I will give it to you," Sheen said.

Castro pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct in connection with the Dec. 6 incident. He admitted taking a bottle of ranch salad dressing from the school cafeteria to the bathroom and ejaculating into it, and then returning it to the cafeteria where juniors and seniors eat lunch.

Students reported Castro, and the senior was expelled from Wheaton North. There were no reported cases of illness following the incident.

Castro told police he thought of the prank after watching a movie filled with crude stunts.

"I have no explanation for what I did," Castro said in court. "I felt bad after I did it."

Harry Smith, Castro's attorney, noted that the teen already had been punished, including missing the end of his senior year and humiliating himself and his family.

"It has not been without consequences," Smith said.

Posted by ronnie at 02:51 PM | Comments (0)

February 05, 2007

Getting fabulous hair takes a bit of bull ... semen

LONDON (Reuters) - An upmarket London beauty salon says it can give your hair the ultimate shine by treating it with a mixture that includes semen from thoroughbred bulls.

Hari's in ritzy Chelsea offers a 45-minute "Aberdeen Organic Hair" treatment that involves massaging a protein-rich mixture of bull semen and a plant root into the client's hair, a spokeswoman told Reuters on Friday.

Owner Hari Salem told media that he tried hundreds of products -- including wild avocados and truffle oil -- before hitting on bull semen as the elusive element in a formula for making hair look gorgeous.

"The semen is refrigerated before use and doesn't smell," Salem told the Metro newspaper. "It leaves your hair looking wonderfully soft and thick."

He said the treatment will remain on offer providing the bulls can keep up the supply.

Posted by ronnie at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)

December 11, 2006

Taxman gives Danish sperm bank a headache

COPENHAGEN (AFP) - One of the world's largest sperm banks, Denmark's Cryos, said it feared recent changes to tax laws requiring donors to declare income from their contributions would put their anonymity at risk and lead to a fall in donations.

"The tax authority has introduced new rules that apply to human guinea pigs and sperm donors. This will have consequences, it will be harder to find volunteers," Cryos managing director Ole Schou told AFP.

Each sperm donor in Denmark receives around 250 kroner (45 dollars, 33.50 euros) per donation, primarily to cover travel expenses.

Until now sperm donations in the Scandinavian country were anonymous and sperm banks themselves were not authorized to record donors' identities.

While the tax authority is required to respect donors' confidentiality, Schou feared the system was not infallible.

Cryos has 250 regular donors and attracts between 300 and 500 new volunteers every year. The company undertook a poll among 100 of its donors to discover if the changes to the tax law would dissuade them from contributing.

"Only seven percent said they would continue," Schou said.

If Cryos was to pay more for donations, 23 percent of those asked said they would continue to donate sperm, suggesting donors' main concern was anonymity.

"If we lose 75 percent (of our donors), we would have serious problems," Schou said.

The bank provides sperm to more than 50 countries, and Schou said he feared the effect the changes would have, for example, on couples unable to have babies who were seeking to have children.

Cryos has turned to the Danish parliament's health committee in the hope of securing a compromise with the tax authority.