It may seem strange to see the facts we learn in highschool challenged by scientific research, but this happens all the time. People who go on to study history or literature in college are often surprised to find out that there are different opinions, different schools of thought, and different theories about historical personalities like Napoleon or authors like James Joyce, so that what they learned in highschool may be just 'one of the possibilities'. And in the hard sciences new theories and new explanations appear with unsurprising regularity -- producing them is, after all, the reason why we have scientists and research.

I think people often come out of highschool with this funny impression that they've learned "the truth" and that it won't be necessary to rethink it later on. This may explain some of the level of emotionality in the reactions to new theories and new ideas from science. I suppose people always want some sort of reassuring "big truth", something religion-like. It is a bit scary to realize that this isn't, and can't ever be, the case.

You need to improve your reading comprehension skills...

Broadsheet promotes too major concepts:

Sex without procreation

AND

Procreation without sex

It's dangerous to mix the two, unless you want an abortion.

Why are we trying to promote fertility?? The world has enough people already, thanks! Infertility is Mother Nature's way of putting the brakes on rampant population growth and one should not f*ck with Mother Nature.

I is not at all surprising that sperm frozen for over 20 years would still be able to produce a pregnancy. The damage that is done to any kind of frozen cell happens during the freeze/thaw process not during storage. The same is true for frozen embryos.

Deterioration happens in home freezer because they really are not that cold and the small molecular movements that cause problems still occur. Sperm and embryos are stored in liquid nitrogen which is so cold that molecules essentially stand still. As far as we know there is no time limit on storage.

Most people who have sperm and embryos frozen come back for them sooner than 20 years which is why this happened before. In theory, sperm could be frozen for 100 years or more and still be able to be used to make babies.

Think about this: If a woman is conceived through IVF and her mother chooses to have embryos frozen but not to use them, the IVF baby could have them thawed out and implanted, thereby giving birth to her biological siblings. It would be no more surprising than a woman achieving a pregnancy with embryos frozen for a year, it's the freeze/thaw, not the storage that kills them.