Nobel Prize Sperm Bank

I thought this was fairly interesting. It's an article about the Nobel Prize Winners Sperm Bank (although that term's misleading). The article's here but I'll quote what I thought was the most interesting part:

"Schulz: You mentioned that part of your own interest in looking into this story was to unpack what it was that was driving this genetic engineering for smarter kids and a smarter race. ... But it seems that you discovered, in looking into this, that Americans seem to value some things as highly as or more highly than intelligence...?

Plotz: That's right. ... the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank ended up without any children of Nobel Prize donors because Robert Graham started out with some Nobel Prize donors in 1980, and then after this bad publicity these Nobelists didn't want to be involved. But he also realized that Nobelists were too old to be good donors. And, more importantly, Nobelists were a product that women didn't exactly want....they were too much brainiac...

I think what we've ended up with has been this consumer revolution in sperm banking, which I get into in the book. It's a situation where women have this expectation of everything. And they want men who combine brains...and height and good health history and good looks. And so there's an intense choosiness."

I don't think it's surprising to find out that women are interested in more than just having the world's smartest child. I did find it surprising that the author calls this "an intense choosiness". He's writing about women who are paying for a product. What would you expect them to order up? Uh, let's see...what do you have in the way of a short, balding, overweight asthmatic on dialysis who didn't make it past the 10th grade and still lives with his mother? Seriously.