BeautifulPeople.com, the dating site where ugly people need not apply, has launched a virtual sperm (and egg) bank for people who want to have beautiful babies.   Really.

 They call it the Beautiful Baby service and they have also made it available to non-members  because, let's face it, the only way for more beautiful babies to be created is to have pretty men impregnate ugly women too, so take one for the team, fellow awesome men who are both smart and hot. 

 They are serious.   Says Greg Hodge, managing director, "There are no financial benefits for us in doing so - we are simply responding to a demand for attractive donors. Every parent would like their child to be blessed with many fine attributes, attractiveness being one of the most sought after.  For a site with members who resemble Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Angelina Jolie you can imagine the demand."
 
I can't, actually.  Who knew this even existed before I made them famous in my column?   How is it that people are agonizing over the collapse of Scienceblogs and some spilled oil yet no one is up in arms and throwing pig blood at officers of this company?   

 Founder Robert Hintze says, "Initially, we hesitated to widen the offering to non-beautiful people. But everyone - including ugly people - would like to bring good looking children in to the world, and we can't be selfish with our attractive gene pool. "


Robert Hintze and Greg Hodge.   I can't tell which is which.  Does it matter?   The one on the left should find pants that fit.

You have to admire their boldness.   Even on a site like this, where we proudly tell anyone we are smarter than they are, the frank disclosure that they are better looking than everyone else is still a little startling.   Maybe it is just our competitive nature.

Jean Smith, a cultural anthropologist who specializes in the area of flirtation/human attraction, says this happens all of the time whether it is politically correct to acknowledge it or not and the company is just laying it out there with less hypocrisy.   "BeautifulPeople.com is doing what people are doing anyway, which is securing what they believe to be the highest level of genetic material they can, to ensure the best chance of success for their offspring."

Jean Smith, cultural anthropologist.  No idea if she is a member of BeautifulPeople.com or if you can impregnate her.

They say over 600 babies have been born to couples who met through the site.  The company also claims that since its creation in 2002, BeautifulPeople.com has become the world's largest community of beautiful people with over 600,000 members from 190 countries, though they had  a recent cull of 5,000 members who gained weight so maybe it is only 595,000 now. 

 Okay,  not that anyone is really interested but just supposing, you know, as a goof, how would that virtual sperm bank work?

It's downright brilliant.   You register and state your 'procreation' interest.   Sure, there are lots of married members, but also plenty of single men who just want to 'help' build a better tomorrow.   It sounds like a 1970s key party, except on the Internet.   And I don't know if they get to have real sex or not.

But, if not, they can get a list of clinics to contact and gather information on the donor protocol.  Which doesn't sound all that interesting. 

 But with 600,000 members this could be a great idea in other areas, especially areas where we are the beautiful people, like intelligence.

Announcing the Science 2.0® Smart Baby(TM) Sperm And Egg Bank

What do you all think about a SMART BABY service for women and men who want to have intelligent kids?   We could create a part of the site that will put intelligent men in touch with women who want to up their chances of having a true Baby Einstein.   Let's face it, we will need more smart kids for the Future War that will occur after all the beautiful people try to get rid of us smart ones.

But, since we are smart, by then we will have created ...

Logan's Run for Beautiful People



Let's be honest, you can't be over 30 and still be beautiful so it would seem natural to have our future uber-intelligent kids design a system where awesome future technology culls a few thousand here and there the same way BeautifulPeople.com culls people who gain some weight.

Let me know what you think.   It's got to be easier than writing science on the Internet.  As those Scienceblogs folks have discovered, selling advertising is a bitch and we could get out of that hassle with a members-only service where scientists get more sex and get to kill stupid pretty people.