17
votes
A post on X claiming that Denmark has introduced an IQ threshold of at least 85 for sperm donors has sparked confusion, debate and memes, but ultimately is misleading
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- Title
- Are sperm banks in Denmark rejecting donors based on their IQ?
- Published
- Dec 4 2025
- Word count
- 534 words
The whole story: One sperm bank in Denmark does indeed filter out people with below 85 IQ or with a criminal record.
It's just that it's the one sperm bank, whereas some complete rando on twitter claimed that it was a nation-wide rule.
This is a short mediocre article which reacts to a literal shitpost on X that was seen by less than 20k people, the title is somewhat clickbaity because it doesn't say in what way it's misleading, and the decision not even that controversial.
Maybe the original on X (which I refuse to use), but it has popped up on instagram and Reddit for me. I think it has more reach than you think.
Is this policy, even if it was nation wide really that bad? I know if I was in need of sperm donation I would like to know the donor was screened for genetic issues, birth defects, normal mental abilities, criminality, ect. I have no idea if you can really tie 'intelligence' and 'criminality' to genetics, but in my day to day life it certainly seems plausible, thought I'm willing to admit that it most likely has to do with upbringing. In my experience loser parents tend to have loser kids, many outliers of course, but why risk it?
I'm also completely ignorant of the process of donating and receiving sperm donation, what attributes do they collect and allow people to select already? Can people pick the race of the donor? I wouldn't want to see a situation were wealthy people can pick 'premium' sperm from the best donors leaving everyone else with a roll of the dice.
An IQ of 85 is pretty low, that person would likely be disabled, what benefit to society is there to have that person donate sperm? Is this too close to eugenics?
Definitely not true and being precisely one standard deviation from the mean the number of people with IQ under 85 is still quite large.
For reference, this is certainly opening a can of worms, but at least as recently as late 90s black people in the US scored an average of 85 in IQ tests and approximately the same scores were derived from widely administered tests with known g-loading, like the SATs. I assume the gap has narrowed since then (because I assume the result is for the most part environmental and those tend to shrink over time), it's difficult to find current data because of how controversial it is naturally, but it still exists, the data is pretty clear and it comes from official institutions, not from "racial science" (which is why it's hard to find current data, understandably nobody wants to brag about this).
85 is at the very bottom of "average" and some quick searching says most people with that level can function just fine. 70-85 is when it drops to "below average", and under 70 is when it's considered a disability.
That aside, I also don't have experience with sperm banks, but to my knowledge they typically give a loose profile of physical traits. I think a lot of couples look for donors who sound similar to the other parent (which would naturally include race). I've heard of some couples even managing to have the same donor for multiple children so the kids would be full-blood siblings. I don't think there's much concern about hoarding "premium" sperm at regular sperm banks.
That said, I do know there was a sperm bank by a eugenics group that specialized in "premium" sperm, only accepting donations from certified geniuses or other men with great accomplishments like major musicians, pro athletes, etc. It ultimately shut down due to the obvious controversy and criticism (they were REALLY upfront about the eugenics part), but my takeaway was that sperm banks can be choosy about donors.
At least according to Duck.AI an IQ of 100 is average intelligence.
Let's not just blindly trust an AI and pull up wikipedia (which, if you haven't donated to, consider supporting since they're asking for donations right now).
If you check under the 'Modern tests' drop down, it does state the same: The ordinal scale has 100 as the mean, and every 15 points is a standard deviation (as pointed out by fxgn). It also states that IQ points are not percentage points, so someone with an IQ of 50 is not considered half as smart as someone with 100.
I was under the impression that IQ tests are scaled specifically so that 100 falls on the mean. It's not just that the average happens to be 100, it's that 100 is the average by definition.
... and for a casual conversation on social media it is enough. :-)
And is also updated regularly to aim at the midpoint of the range. Someone's IQ can change over the course of their life not only because of their own innate efforts, but because the population got smarter around them. Truly, IQ is a zero sum game.
Yes, IQ of 100 is the average and every 15 points is one standard deviation from the average. That's a thing most people don't know about IQ - most (including myself, before I learned this) think it's just some sort of score-based system of how many "intelligence points" you have, which leads to absurd things like people claiming to have 270 IQ.
Surely you could “have” and IQ of 270, it’s just only 1 in a thousand quintillion quintillion (1*10^29) people would have that IQ, definitely impressive then if true
Sure, that's possible, although extremely unlikely for something I've seen at least 4 people claim.
Also, none of the commercial IQ tests can even give a score that high
I would imagine someone's IQ can also go down over the course of their life.
Poor brain health certainly. Maybe getting into the habit of lazy thinking, no thinking at all, no problem solving.