ELLEN GOODMAN
A MASTER MATCH - OR MISMATCH

Author: ELLEN GOODMAN

Date: Tuesday, July 20, 1982
Page: ?????
Section: OP- ED

I, for one, foolishly dismissed The Repository for Germinal Choice as just another phallic symbol . . . without the symbolism.

The stated purpose of the sperm bank was to cast the seed of assorted geniuses upon the ova of the land. This was their "means of breeding higher intelligence."

But there was apparently a market for this sort of matchmaking. The first genius to report for duty was William Shockley, a 70-year-old Nobel Prize- winning inventor of the transistor. He's a man who believes that the disadvantaged slid to the bottom of the heap on their genes.

When he announced that he was willing to donate his sperm for the improvement of the human race, I began to pray fervently that egotism was not transmitted along the DNA.

Lo these years, the repository has been collecting and disseminating sperm
from an underground chamber in the backyard of a 10-acre estate near Escondido, Calif. Finally, after this lengthy gestation it gave birth in April to its first baby, a healthy nine-pound girl, offspring (or off-sperm if you prefer) of an "eminent mathematician" in his 30s with an IQ of over 200.

All this is fine and dandy. Right now, we should all be breathlessly waiting for Victoria to start learning her Sesame Street numbers at three months.

But the latest news from the genetic front lines about the creation of the new Master Race, or Mistress race, is a bit startling. It turns out that Victoria's mum (or egg-donor if you prefer), 39-year-old Joyce Kowalski, has two previous children by an earlier marriage. These children were removed from the custody of Joyce and her second husband Jack after allegations of child abuse.

If that weren't enough, it also turns out that Joyce and Jack are ex-cons. They did time in federal prison in 1978 on fraud charges. Their scam was a simple one. They sent away for birth certificates of people who had died in infancy, and then assumed their identity to get loans and credit cards.

It now appears that the friendly neighborhood repository was more picky about the sperm than the egg, let alone the environment of its heirs.

Nobody knows what the "eminent mathematician" with an IQ of over 200 feels about all this. But we can guess. After all, two years ago, true believer Shockley told Playboy magazine that his own children represent a very significant regression because "my first wife - their mother - had not as high an academic achievement standing as I had."

Now I won't leap to the conclusion that Victoria's mother was inferior. She was never given an IQ test, but she does have a literary streak. Last month, she wrote about the birth for the National Enquirer: " God thank you, thank you,' I cried. Tears streaked down my eyes as a nurse lifted my newborn baby girl into my arms - a baby who could be the first of a new breed of genius children. . . . These are the greatest minds of all time and one of them might be the father of my child,' I gasped." There you are, a Nobel Prize for Literature.

Still, the whole thing sounds like all of those wonderful stories abut mad scientists whose experiments go awry. Instead of producing the cure for cancer, they produce The Cell That Ate New York. Instead of producing the Master Race, they produce the Master Criminal Race.

Imagine, after all, how useful Victoria's mathematical mind could have been in the former Kowalski endeavor. Instead of a mere birth-certificate scam, she could have devised a computer scam.

In a famous incident of the 19th century, a famous actress suggested that she mate with George Bernard Shaw. She envisioned a child with his mind and her looks. Shaw recoiled out of the terror: What if they produced a child with his looks and her mind? In this genetic lottery, what if little Vicky has her daddy's math IQ and her mommy's ethics?

The saga of Victoria should be enough to abort the entire sperm-bank genius project, but don't count on it. You know how geniuses are. In the words of the one in charge of this repository, "A high IQ doesn't guarantee emotional stability."

FX8280;07/16,14:15 MFEENE;07/21,13 B07811705