New Hope for Paralyzed Men Who Wish to Father Children

Men who are paralyzed from the waist down are limited when it comes to having a normal sex life and fathering children. However, new low-tech techniques are offering new hope for paralyzed men wishing to conceive children naturally. According to an MSNBC article, doctors at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago state that most men with spinal cord injuries can father children. Unfortunately, many of the less invasive, less expensive techniques aren't presented to the very men they would benefit.

Some fertility doctors simply do not present paralyzed men with all of their options. "Instead some fertility doctors jump immediately to expensive, invasive procedures, such as surgically extracting sperm from the testes, when confronted by a man in a wheelchair." (MSNBC) According to Geoff Luther, a young man affected by paralysis, whose story, and that of his family, MSNBC detailed in a news story, it takes the best fertility and financial resources in order to discover the most effective techniques in achieving fertility in men with paralysis. "What helped in Geoff's case was a device that triggers ejaculation with a low-voltage impulse of electricity, a procedure borrowed from animal husbandry and developed for use in humans by Dr. Carol J. Bennett and her colleagues at the University of Michigan's urology department." (MSNBC) As a result of the procedure, Geoff and his wife Tammy were able to start a family. They now have a son Trent (6) and a daughter named Kayla (3).