Egg Donation: Good Deed or Risky Venture?
What's the truth behind the appealing egg donation ads?
It’s marketed to women as an altruistic act coupled with a financial incentive: “Help infertile couples achieve their dream of having a child by becoming an egg donor,” one ad states. The range of compensation for egg donation ranges from $3,000 to $8,000 with other offers reaching $10,000 or above. (Wall Street Journal)
It’s an offer too good to pass up for some women who are facing financial challenges. Print advertisements often appear in college and university newspapers, targeting female college students whose school debt could be wiped away with successful egg donation.
Promised payments of up to $50,000 have turned up in advertisements published in Ivy League college newspapers, if the woman is both athletically and scholastically gifted with no major family medical problems. (Kolata)
If this seems too good to be true, it is. Egg donation is risky business for egg donors —women who subject their bodies to a procedure called ovarian hyperstimulation. During this process, a woman is injected with powerful hormones that cause her ovaries to produce more than the usual one or two eggs per month. Then, she is put under anesthesia so that a doctor can surgically extract her eggs. Studies report that anywhere from 5 to 14 percent of women who undergo ovarian hyperstimulation experience severe complications from ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS) — a condition associated with stimulating the ovaries for excess egg production. Complications can include blood clots, kidney and liver damage, future infertility and death.
Most people are unaware that egg donation and human cloning for stem cell go hand-in-hand, creating a financially driven market for women’s eggs. For more information on the connection between egg harvesting and cloning experiments, go to www.votenocloning.org Click on “booklet.”
For more information on the exploitation of women through egg donation and harvesting, see www.handsoffourovaries.com
To read stories of women who donated eggs and lived to regret it, see:
Woman X: My Story as an Egg Donor
http://www.cbc-network.org/research_display.php?id=394
Diary of a Nameless, Faceless Egg Donor
http://www.cbc-network.org/research_display.php?id=379
Endnotes:
“Ova Time: Women line up to donate eggs – for money,” Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2008; accessed online May 29, 2009 at
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122878524586490129.html
Gina Kolata, “$50,000 offered to tall, smart egg donor,”
References for Process and risks of egg harvesting:
accessed on-line
David Magnus, Mildred K. Cho, “Issues in Oocyte Donation for Stem
Cell Research,” Science Express, May 19, 2005
Ursula Brigitte Kaiser, “The Pathogenesis of the Ovarian
Hyperstimulation Syndrome,”
21, 2003
Annick Delvigne and Serge Rozenberg, “Epidemiology and prevention
of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS): a review,” Human
Reproduction Update, November/December, 2002
Reija Klemetti, et al, “Complications of IVF and ovulation induction,”
Human Reproduction, August 26, 2005
Effy Vayena, et al, “Current practices and controversies in assisted
reproduction,” Report for World Health Organization, 2002
April 11, 2006 at http://www.stanford.edu/class/siw198q/websites/eggdonor/procedures.html
Monash IVF, “Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome,” Accessed on-line
April 11, 2006 at http://www.monashivf.edu.au/library/factsheets/ovarian_hyperstimulation.html
Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, “Ovarian
Hyperstimulation Syndrome,” accessed on-line on April 11, 2006 at
http://www.monashivf.edu.au/library/factsheets/ovarian_hyperstimulation.html
Robert Steinbrook, “Egg donation and Human Embryonic Stem-cell
research,” New England Journal of Medicine, January 26, 2006
If you enjoy reading stories like this one, sign up for the free CitizenLink Daily Update e-mail. You'll get news and commentary from Focus on the Family Action delivered right to your computer.
