By Valerie Alvord, special for USA TODAY

SAN DIEGO — Some servicemen heading to the Middle East are doing something only modern-day military fighters would consider. They are freezing their sperm before they ship out.

Fear of vaccines and chemical and biological agents has some servicemen freezing their sperm before they ship out.
By Mike Nelson, AFP

Fear of vaccines and possible exposure to chemical and biological agents has prompted at least 80 men in the military to visit laboratories that process and store sperm. It's a small number from the nation's two largest sperm banks, but it's a huge shift from previous years when the labs say they had almost no military clients. (Related story: Troops start trend with sperm banks)

California Cryobank in Los Angeles is offering military men a year of free storage and discounts on sperm processing. The lab fielded about 80 calls and scheduled 37 appointments in the past three weeks, client manager Nolberto Delgadillo says.

Another sperm bank, Fairfax Cryobank in Fairfax, Va., has been setting two or three appointments a week for the past several months. And the Cambridge, Mass., branch of California Cryobank has gotten about 15 calls and set five appointments.

Lab managers say the men making the inquiries aren't doing this in case they die in combat. Instead, they're more concerned about coming home and discovering they're infertile and unable to start a family.

Women leaving for the war zone don't have a similar last-minute option because storing eggs has a low success rate, the labs say.

Patrick Atwell, 35, a sergeant in the Army National Guard who lives in Corcoran, Calif., says he would feel "robbed if I couldn't have children." Atwell says he was warned of the risks of infertility by a buddy in his unit who said "he had become sterile after a previous deployment and an anthrax vaccination."

The military says there is no data linking mandatory vaccinations — or any other substance soldiers might encounter — and infertility. But thousands of veterans of the Gulf War 12 years ago complained of maladies ranging from recurring headaches and muscle pain to infertility.

Many of them attribute their illnesses to a combination of the anthrax vaccine and pollutants, pesticides and chemicals they believe they encountered during the war.

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