By Robin von Halle
Are you a 5′9” or taller Caucasian female, who is between 18 and 30 years of age, very attractive, college educated and athletic with no genetic medical issues? If so, an ad in the Stanford University Daily promises to pay you $100,000 for an egg donation.
Frankly, I’d find such advertising amusing if it didn’t cross a dangerous ethical line - treating human life like a commodity. No wonder some people think we’re in the business of selling “designer genes.”
When agencies compensate egg donors based on SAT scores, athletic trophies and beauty pageants, it sends a negative message about fertility practices. That’s why we at ARR felt it was so important to adopt a code of ethics and to promote that code on behalf of our entire industry.
Our code of ethics calls for compensating egg donors and gestational surrogates solely for their time, effort and inconvenience, in keeping with the American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) guidelines. There are no premiums for blue eyes or Ivy League degrees.
We hope others in our industry will join us by embracing similar ethical standards. The world should know we’re in the business of helping build families, not auctioning off genetic matter to the highest bidder.
4 comments
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January 31, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Stephanie Caballero
While I have represented some donors who have received $20,000.00, I do feel that $100,000 is unethical. However, I asked an attorney who worked with a client who wanted to pay that sum, but ended up paying $50,000.00 and he said if the client is looking for a specific type of woman, who is highly educated and extremely accomplished, then why shouldn’t he pay?
Women are not commodities and when the fees for a donor get to that point, all the young, college woman would see is the money and not the fact that she is undergoing a medical procedure. While I underwent 11 egg retrievals to try and get pregnant on my own and experienced no complications, there are still risks involved and those risks, combined with the fact that these young women are helping create a human lifecould be blurred by the large sums of money paid.
February 3, 2008 at 4:22 am
accident compensation claim
I feel the agencies like these should be banned
March 31, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Mary
If there is a market with people willing to pay extra for specific donors, why stop them? Choosing an egg donor is a very personal and difficult decision. Why limit the field?
April 3, 2008 at 3:27 pm
arr1
It’s not an issue of limiting the field. As per the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), the idea behind compensating egg donors is to recognize the time, effort and inconvenience of the donation process – not to reward them for genetic blessings.
-Mary Ellen McLaughlin, ARR