Truly Dead-Beat Dads

Fertility clinics report a rise in requests for sperm to be harvested from men who are in no position to be fathers. It’s post-mortem sperm procurement and since sperm can live in a man’s body for up to 48 hours after his death, the fertilization still works.

The post-death procedure is being done more often, according to a study by the University of Pennsylvania.

But there are still those nagging ethical questions: Who can request the sperm, and do dead men have any rights as to whether they become fathers or not? (From February Men’s Journal)

* Breast stroke, side stroke, whatever: A study by former Harvard University research scientist Phillip Whitten says regular swimmers have a more active sex life than non-swimmers.

“It doesn’t matter if you are 20, 40, 60 or even older. if you want an active and rewarding sex life, start swimming,” says Whitten, who is now the editor-in-chief of Swim and Swimming World magazines.

* A salute to strong women: Japan’s Junko Tabel was the first woman to reach the top of Mount Everest, on May 16, 1975; 41 others have done so since.

Tabel raised the $5,000 needed for the expedition by giving piano lessons. One of the challenges, though, was the eight male cameramen and journalists who accompanied her. “It would have been so much easier without them,” she says. “If you climb with men, there are so many troubles.” (From inaugural issue of Women Outside)

* It’s all Mary all the time: Writer Naomi Wolf explaining the booming interest in the Virgin Mary: “… we know that we’ve made a hash of the 20th century. Male leadership is a hollow totem, and because our Judeo-Christian God the Father is so often harsh and retributive, Mary’s new fans perhaps suspect that there will be trouble if justice is not tempered with a mother’s mercy.

“How human, then, for crowds in Georgia and Kentucky and New York to `see’ proof that the face of the divine is the face of a mom after all — compassionate, forbearing when we blow it, and always ready to grace us, in our ravaged world, with the scent of fresh roses and a second chance.” (From January George)

* Did someone say lawsuit? The Wall Street Journal reports that some companies are inviting overweight employees to sign up for personal “downsizing.”

One such company, AB&C Group, a direct-marketing company in McLean, Va., divided 240 of its employees into four-member teams with names like “Jelly Bellies” and “Your Mama’s Fat Boys” and then held a two-month weight-reduction contest.