REPRODUCTIVE
TECHNOLOGY:
EGG DONATION &
BIOENGINEERING
1 Miracle Babies
(Anonymous Author)
People Weekly, Oct 12, 1998 v50 n13 p62, 3p
Twenty years after the first in vitro fertilization, thousands of U.S. families celebrate the breakthrough that gave them
their children
When Louise Brown was born at Oldham Hospital near Manchester, England, in July 1978, the world reacted as if she
were a creature of science fiction. The first child conceived by in vitro fertilization--that is, by uniting sperm and egg in a
glass container--she was instantly known as the test-tube baby. Such was her notoriety that after leaving the hospital she
had to be fed at midnight in a car on an empty street near the family's home in Bristol, since throngs of reporters made it
impossible to reach the front door. For years neither she nor her working-class parents, Lesley and John Brown, could
escape the global spotlight. The unrelenting scrutiny once prompted Brown, now a preschool nurse in Bristol, to admit,
"Sometimes I wish it wasn't me." Despite the attention, she has emerged as a healthy, happy young woman.
"Our duty to Louise was to get a thousand others so she wouldn't be alone," says scientist Robert Edwards, who with his
late partner, gynecologist Patrick Steptoe, masterminded that first successful IVF procedure. They were true to their
word. "Within four years," says Edwards, "we had a thousand babies at Bourne Hall [their clinic]." Indeed, 20 years after
Brown's birth, 500,000 children around the world owe their lives to the once-revolutionary procedure. Though one round
of IVF--ovulation induction, egg retrieval, insemination, fertilization, embryo culture and embryo-transfer into the
womb--costs about $10,000, the growing popularity of the technique has been phenomenal: In 1985 there were 257 IVF
births in the U.S.; in 1995 there were 11,342. There are now about 320 fertility clinics across the country, and the
directions in which they have taken assisted reproduction are staggering, involving the freezing of embryos,
postmenopausal motherhood and gender selection. Says Dr. Masood Khatamee of the Fertility Research Foundation of
New York: "There is no limit to where we can go."
As the first generation of IVF children enters adulthood, PEOPLE looks at where we have been and how far we have
come.
AMERICA'S IVF PIONEERS
Howard and Georgeanna Jones keep scrapbooks of photos of their babies. Not just their own--they have three, and seven
grandchildren--but also the hundreds they've helped bring into the world through their IVF expertise. Beginning with
America's first test-tube baby, Elizabeth Carr, born on Dec. 28, 1981, the two Norfolk, Va., physicians have helped
couples give birth to more than 2,000 children so far. Says Jones, 87, of the work he and his wife, 85, have done at
Eastern Virginia Medical School: "It's fun, but there is more than the sheer joy of doing it. You have the feeling that you
are doing something to make things a little better for everybody."
For the Joneses--who grew up in Baltimore, followed their fathers into medicine, met at medical school and married in
1940--the birth of Louise Brown was a watershed. Soon after, Howard Jones told a reporter there was no reason the same
IVF technique couldn't be applied in the U.S. Their phone at the clinic now named after them--the Jones Institute for
Reproductive Medicine--started ringing the next day as infertile couples sought help.
Three years later, Carr was born, and the Joneses still keep a picture of her--sort of--on their wall. It is a black-and-white
framed photo of three cells nestled together. "That's the way she looked before we transferred her," says Howard Jones,
like the proud grandfather he is.
IN THE U.S. SHE BECAME NO. 1
2 When Elizabeth Carr was just 3 years old, she asked the question many parents prefer to evade: "Mommy, where do
babies come from?" Since her daughter, born in 1981, was the first IVF child in the U.S., the task facing Judy Carr, now
45, was even more daunting. "But at no time did we want to gloss it over," says Carr, a preschool administrator, who
turned to IVF after her fallopian tubes were removed. "We wanted to make it clear we were blessed and honored to be
part of this historic technology."
Judy and her husband, Roger, 47, a mechanical engineer, succeeded admirably: At 16, their only child is thriving and
entirely comfortable with her origins. "We count our blessings every day," says Roger. So does Elizabeth. "I knew from
the moment they had me I was loved," says the Westminster, Mass., high school student who hopes for a career in
broadcast journalism.
She may have thought about her birth more often than most, but to her that's no problem. "It forces you to be a little more
well-adjusted because we have to become comfortable with who we are and why we are that way," says Elizabeth. She
and her family have attended several reunions of IVF babies conceived through the Virginia clinic of Drs. Howard and
Georgeanna Jones (who call her every birthday). "The last time, I got to hold babies 1,000 and 1,001," says Elizabeth.
"I'm the big sister of the group."
FOR THE KEHS, IT WASN'T TOO LATE
Arceli Keh and her husband, Isagani, had always had a happy marriage, but as they neared the age when most people are
planning retirement, the couple knew something was missing from their Highland, Calif., home. "You get lonely as you
get older," says Arceli. "We wanted to have a family."
And Arceli was determined to have one. Finally, on her fifth attempt at in vitro fertilization, using an anonymous donor's
egg and Isagani's sperm, she became pregnant. On Nov. 7, 1996--just three months shy of her 64th birthday--she gave
birth to 6-lb., 4-oz. Cynthia Solis, making Arceli the oldest woman ever to bear a child. "This is a miracle baby," she
says. "Without the help of God it would not have happened."
Married in 1980, when she was 47 and he was 44, the Kehs--who met in 1969 in their native Philippines and came to the
U.S. in the early '70s--had found it impossible to conceive a child. But four years ago, Arceli learned that a fertility
program at the University of Southern California would consider patients as old as 55. "I was desperate, so I lied," says
Arceli, then 60, who gave her age as 50. When he learned the truth, Dr. Richard Paulson, who runs the USC program,
took the news in stride. "Most women in this age group want grandkids and want to relax," he says. "Sometimes life
deals you a different hand."
Now, while her contemporaries contemplate lives of leisure, Arceli spends her days delighting in Cynthia, who says
Mommy, Daddy and Nanay, the Filipino term she uses to refer to her maternal grandmother, 86, who lives with the
family. "Sometimes we wish we were 20 years younger," says Arceli. "But we get used to it." At 62, Isagani still works
the night shift at a machine shop. "I will probably retire in another couple of years," he says. "Then I can stay home and
take care of the baby."
EGGS FOR SALE: MEETING A NEED
Carrie Specht is a young Los Angeles movie producer struggling to get by on hard work and big dreams. "I think, eat and
sleep film. It's my first love," says the 31-year-old Santa Cruz native, who lives with her husband of four months, actor
Jorge Urzua, 33. "But my bread-and-butter work comes from producing commercials and music videos."
Three years ago, while Specht was studying at New York University's graduate film school--and paying high rent, tuition
and the costs of making movies--she resorted to an unorthodox means to make ends meet: On four separate occasions,
3 she went to a Manhattan fertility clinic, where Dr. Hugh Melnick used an ultrasound-guided needle to harvest eggs from
her ovaries. Each retrieval yielded from 10 to 15 healthy ova. The eggs were then fertilized in vitro and implanted in
infertile women.
Specht earned up to $2,500 for each of the painful procedures, which were preceded by weeks of daily hormone
injections. "I felt proud of what I was doing," she says. "I provided something precious to couples who needed it."
She occasionally wonders about the children her eggs have produced--and hopes to meet one or more of them someday.
"They might have health questions or family questions or just be curious," she says. She also hasn't ruled out having her
own babies. But for now her creative focus is on the movies she produces, including one short film, Bleach, that won a
Student academy Award. "My films are my children," she says. "That's what I live for."
A FULL HOUSE IN MICHIGAN
When Bobbi McCaughey gave birth to septuplets in 1997, little Veronica L'Esperance told her mother, "We're not
famous anymore because that other woman had seven babies." But Michele L'Esperance would have none of that. "I told
her they would always be famous and very special to me," says the 45-year-old dental assistant from Davisburg, Mich.
Indeed, Veronica, her sisters Alexandria, Danielle and Erica and their brother Raymond will forever remain the first IVF
quintuplets born in the U.S.
The five infants were born two months prematurely on Jan. 11, 1988. Michele, who has two children from a previous
marriage, and husband Ray, a deputy sheriff who has a son from his first, had turned to IVF because Michele had had her
fallopian tubes removed after the birth of her second son. Seven embryos were placed in her womb, and six weeks later
the couple learned from an ultrasound that quints were on the way. Recalls Michele: "I was really frightened that I would
lose them--that was my only concern."
Last year, aided by news clippings and a diary, the couple told the quints how they had been born. "They accepted it at
face value," says Michele. So what's it like being a famous quintuplet? "You always have someone to play with," says
Danielle. "But," adds Alexandria, "you get less ice cream."
COLD STORAGE, HAPPY RETURNS
After enduring two miscarriages and four years of arduous, expensive and fruitless hormone therapy, Katherine Canfield
was overjoyed when doctors invited her and her husband, Tom, to gaze through a microscope at the embryo that would
grow, once implanted in Katherine's womb, into their healthy daughter Emma. "To see your child as a couple of cells--
there are no words to describe that," says Katherine, 41.
A decade ago she and Tom, an architect, were close to despair in their quest to have a baby. Then they contacted Dr.
Michael DiMattina at the Dominion Fertility and Endocrinology clinic near the couple's home outside Washington, D.C.
He suggested the then novel approach of cryopreservation. DiMattina started Katherine on drugs to stimulate ovulation,
then removed eggs and fertilized them with Tom's sperm. But instead of implanting the embryos in her uterus, DiMattina
froze them in liquid nitrogen--and waited until the drug-induced chemical imbalance in Katherine's body had abated.
"The drugs may have made an unfavorable environment," says DiMattina, "that could have interfered with implantation."
So far the frozen embryo transfer process has worked twice for the Canfields: Emma was born in 1990, and her brother
Tommy followed two years later. The Canfields are expecting a third child in January, this time with the help of nothing
more than standard hormone treatments. "After all this, we're getting a chance to see what a more normal pregnancy
looks like," says Katherine. "It's great."
4 By Thomas A. Shannon
America, 05/01/99, Vol. 180 Issue 15, p6, 1p
EGGS NO LONGER CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN
AN ADVERTISEMENT that appeared recently in the newspapers of several Ivy League colleges seeking a
smart, tall, healthy and athletic egg donor for $50,000 reveals much about America and the fertility business.
Clearly we have now passed into a model of fertility services that implements the motto "If you can afford it, you
can get it." Also the ante for egg "donors" has been raised considerably, from about $1,000 to $5,000 and now to
$50,000. Surely, for a month of somewhat risky injections of drugs and aspiration of the eggs we have gone
beyond reasonable compensation to clear bribery. And with the cost of attending one of the Ivys (or almost any
college) approaching the $50,000 per year mark, this may indeed prove to be an offer some cannot refuse.
Yet several problems remain. The ad is predicated on what I call the genetic fallacy: If your genes are good, so is
everything else. Unfortunately this is not true. Good genes may take one a long way, but they are no guarantee of
a healthy life. Neither are good genes (should we even be able to define such a reality) a guarantee of being a
decent, kind or even successful person. We know that there are a lot of jerks around, and their quantity and
longevity suggest that even they have their share of good genes. There are simply no guarantees in life, and even
the most sophisticated genetic planning and screening cannot change that.
Second, given the parental expenditures and expectations in obtaining the prized egg, what will happen if the child
does not come up to snuff? Even assuming that the father's SAT score was over 1400, that he is over 5 feet 10
inches and athletic, the child may still turn out to be short, not interested in academics and a klutz. The genetic
fallacy raises its ugly head again, for the child may disappoint the inflated expectations of the parents. What if the
child does not want to attend an Ivy? Or what if--the fertility gods forbid--the child is not accepted (though one of
my students suggested that the child might be considered a legacy because of the egg's origin)? The ad seems to
suggest high expectations for the child (and all parents want what is best for their child), but the margin for error
seems quite narrow here.
An ad such as this also raises, even if unintentionally, the strong scent of eugenics, the attempt to breed in or out
certain qualities. In the past this has led to genocide, racism and regressive immigration policies. In the future it
may lead, thanks to both prenatal diagnosis and ads such as this, to accepting children only if they possess traits
we desire or try to program into them. Children might no longer be loved for who they are but only if they meet
their parents' expectations. Childhood is already difficult enough; but if one is a constant disappointment to
parents because the characteristics they so carefully selected and purchased are absent, how much more difficult
will growing up be! Furthermore, the classism and racism of this ad are fairly obvious and blatant. Why intensify
these tendencies of our society with ads such as this one?
This ad makes clear that the market has indeed taken control of reproduction and that body parts are now
commodities to be exchanged for what the market will bear. Perhaps the time is ripe for a national discussion of
the cost, methods and access to reproductive services and clinics. Shouldn't we reevaluate a notion of reproductive
freedom that equates freedom with the capacity to purchase whatever reproductive services I can afford? In this
matter of choice, we need to remember that we have to think as carefully about what we choose as we do about
guaranteeing our right to choose.
Thomas A. Shannon is professor of religion and social ethics at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.
5
EGG HEADS
By Kathryn Jean Lopez
Human Life Review, Fall 98, Vol. 24 Issue 4, p106, 4p
Filling the waiting room to capacity and spilling over into a nearby conference room, a group of young women
listen closely and follow the instructions: complete the forms and return them, with the clipboard, to the
receptionist. It's all just as in any medical office. Then they move downstairs, where the doctor briefs them.
"Everything will be pretty much normal," she explains. "Women complain of skin irritation in the local area of
injection and bloating. You also might be a little emotional. But, basically, it's really bad PMS."
This is not just another medical office. On a steamy night in July, these girls in their twenties are attending an
orientation session for potential egg donors at a New Jersey fertility clinic specializing in in-vitro fertilization.
Within the walls of IVF New Jersey and at least two hundred other clinics throughout the United States, young
women answer the call to give "the gift of life" to infertile couples. Egg donation is a quietly expanding industry,
changing the way we look at the family, young women's bodies, and human life itself.
It is not a pleasant way to make money. Unlike sperm donation, which is Over in less than an hour, egg donation
takes the donor some 56 hours and includes a battery of tests, ultrasound, self-administered injections, and
retrieval. Once a donor is accepted into a program, she is given hormones to stimulate the ovaries, changing the
number of eggs matured from the usual one per month up to as many as fifty. A doctor then surgically removes the
eggs from the donor's ovary and fertilizes them with the designated sperm.
Although most programs require potential donors to undergo a series of medical tests and counseling, there is little
indication that most of the young women know what they are getting themselves into. They risk bleeding,
infection, and scarring. When too many eggs are matured in one cycle, it can damage the ovaries and leave the
donor with weeks of abdominal pain. (At worst, complications may leave her dead.) Longer term, the possibility
of early menopause raises the prospect of future regret. There is also some evidence of a connection between
fertility drugs used in the process and ovarian cancer.
But it's good money--and getting better. New York's Brooklyn IVF raised its "donor compensation" from $2,500
to $5,000 per cycle earlier this year in order to keep pace with St. Barnabas Medical Center in nearby Livingston,
New Jersey. It's a bidding war. "It's obvious why we had to do it," says Susan Lobel, Brooklyn IVF's assistant
director. Most New York-area IVF programs have followed suit.
Some infertile couples and independent brokers are offering even more for "reproductive material." The
International Fertility Center in Indianapolis, Indiana, for instance, places ads in the Daily Princetonian offering
Princeton girls as much as $35,000 per cycle. The National Fertility Registry, which, like many egg brokerages,
features an online catalogue for couples to browse in, advertises $35,000 to $50,000 for Ivy League eggs. While
donors are normally paid a flat fee per cycle, there have been reports of higher payments to donors who produce
more eggs.
College girls are the perfect donors. Younger eggs are likelier to be healthy, and the girls themselves frequently
need money--college girls have long been susceptible to classified ads offering to pay them for acting as guinea
pigs in medical research. One 1998 graduate of the University of Colorado set up her own website to market her
eggs. She had watched a television show on egg donation and figured it "seemed like a good thing to do"--
especially since she had spent her money during the past year to help secure a country-music record deal. "Egg
donation would help me with my school and music expenses while helping an infertile couple with a family."
Classified ads scattered throughout cyberspace feature similar offers.
6 The market for "reproductive material" has been developing for a long time. It was twenty years ago this summer
that the first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, was born. By 1995, when the latest tally was taken by the Centers for
Disease Control, 15 per cent of mothers in this country had made use of some form of assisted reproduction
technology in conceiving their children. (More recently, women past menopause have begun to make use of this
technology.) In 1991 the American Society for Reproductive Medicine was aware of 63 IVF programs offering
egg donation. That number had jumped to 189 by 1995 (the latest year for which numbers are available).
Defenders argue that it's only right that women are "compensated" for the inconvenience of egg donation.
Brooklyn IVF's Dr. Lobel argues, "If it is unethical to accept payment for loving your neighbor, then we'll have to
stop paying babysitters." As long as donors know the risks, says Mark McGee of the University of Pennsylvania's
Center for Bioethics, this transaction is only "a slightly macabre version of adoption."
Not everyone is enthusiastic about the "progress." Egg donation "represents another rather large step into turning
procreation into manufacturing," says the University of Chicago's Leon Kass. "It's the dehumanization of
procreation." And as in manufacturing, there is quality control. "People don't want to say the word any more, but
there is a strong eugenics issue inherent in the notion that you can have the best eggs your money can buy,"
observes sociology professor Barbara Katz Rothman of the City University of New York.
The demand side of the market comes mostly from career-minded baby-boomers, the frontierswomen of
feminism, who thought they could "have it all." Indeed they can have it all--with a little help from some younger
eggs. (Ironically, feminists are also among its strongest critics; The Nation's Katha Pollitt has pointed out that in
egg donation and surrogacy, once you remove the "delusion that they are making babies for other women," all you
have left is "reproductive prostitution.")
Unfortunately, the future looks bright for the egg market. Earlier this year, a woman in Atlanta gave birth to twins
after she was implanted with frozen donor eggs. The same technology has also been successful in Italy. This is just
what the egg market needed, since it avoids the necessity of coordinating donors' cycles with recipients' cycles.
Soon, not only will infertile couples be able to choose from a wider variety of donor offerings, but in some cases
donors won't even be needed. Young women will be able to freeze their own eggs and have them thawed and
fertilized once they are ready for the intrusion of children in their lives.
There are human ovaries sitting in a freezer in Fairfax, Virginia. The Genetics and IVF Institute offers to cut out
and remove young women's ovaries and cryopreserve the egg-containing tissue for future implantation. Although
the technology was originally designed to give the hope of fertility to young women undergoing treatment for
cancer, it is now starting to attract the healthy. "Women can wait to have children until they are well established in
their careers and getting a little bored, sometime in their forties or fifties," explains Professor Rothman. "Basically,
motherhood is being reduced to a good leisure-time activity."
Early this summer, headlines were made in Britain, where the payment of egg donors is forbidden, when an
infertile couple traveled to a California clinic where the woman could be inseminated with an experimental hybrid
egg. The egg was a combination of the recipient's and a donor's eggs. The clinic in question gets its eggs from a
Beverly Hills brokerage, the Center for Surrogate Parenting and Egg Donation, run by Karen Synesiou and Bill
Handel, a radio shock-jock in Los Angeles. Miss Synesiou recently told the London Sunday Times that she is
"interested in redefining the family. That's why I came to work here."
The redefinition is already well under way. Consider the case of Jaycee Buzzanca. After John and Luanne
Buzzanca had tried for years to have a child, an embryo was created for them, using sperm and an egg from
anonymous donors, and implanted in a surrogate mother. In March 1995, one month before the baby was born,
John filed for divorce. Luanne wanted child support from John, but he refused--after all, he's not the father.
7 Luanne argued that John is Jaycee's father legally. At this point the surrogate mother, who had agreed to carry a
baby for a stable two-parent household, decided to sue for custody.
Jaycee was dubbed "Nobody's Child" by the media when a California judge ruled that John was not the legal
father nor Luanne the legal mother (neither one was genetically related to Jaycee, and Luanne had not even borne
her). Enter Erin Davidson, the egg donor, who claims the egg was used without her permission. Not to be left out,
the sperm donor jumped into the ring, saying that his sperm was used without his permission, a claim he later
dropped. In March of this year, an appeals court gave Luanne custody and decided that John is the legal father,
making him responsible for child support. By contracting for a medical procedure resulting in the birth of a child,
the court ruled, a couple incurs "the legal status of parenthood." (John lost an appeal in May.) For Jaycee's first
three years on earth, these people have been wrangling over who her parents are.
In another case, William Kane left his girlfriend, Deborah Hect, 15 vials of sperm before he killed himself in a Las
Vegas hotel in 1991. His two adult children (represented by their mother, his ex-wife) contested Miss Hect's claim
of ownership. A settlement agreement on Kane's will was eventually reached, giving his children 80 per cent of
his estate and Miss Hect 20 per cent. Hence she was allowed three vials of his sperm. When she did not succeed in
conceiving on the first two tries, she filed a petition for the other 12 vials. She won, and the judge who ruled in her
favor wrote, "Neither this court nor the decedent's adult children possess reason or right to prevent Hect from
implementing decedent's pre-eminent interest in realizing his `fundamental right' to procreate with the woman of
his choice." One day, donors may not even have to have lived. Researchers are experimenting with using aborted
female fetuses as a source of donor eggs.
And the market continues to zip along. For overseas couples looking for donor eggs, Bill Handel has the scenario
worked out. The couple would mail him frozen sperm of their choice (presumably from the recipient husband); his
clinic would use it to fertilize donor eggs, chosen from its catalogue of offerings, and reply back within a month
with a frozen embryo ready for implantation. (Although the sperm does not yet arrive by mail, Handel has sent out
embryos to a least one hundred international customers.) As for the young women at the New Jersey clinic, they
are visibly upset by one aspect of the egg-donation process: they can't have sexual intercourse for several weeks
after the retrieval. For making babies, of course, it's already obsolete.
[This article first appeared in National Review (Sept. 1, 1998) where Miss Lopez is an editorial associate. It is
reprinted with permission. (Copyright 1998 by National Review, Inc.)]
SUPERIOR PEOPLE
Commonweal, 03/26/99, Vol. 126 Issue 6, p5, 2p
Advertising is the lingua franca of the modern age. Everyone has something to sell or something they want to
buy, and advertising is what brings sellers and buyers together. Guaranteeing the quality of the merchandise is a
routine advertising technique. Take the venerable Charleston, South Carolina, wholesalers Austin, Laurens, &
Appleby. They had a boatload of highly valuable merchandise ready for a competitive consumer market.
Assuaging prospective customers' concerns about any hidden defects in their inventory was important. "To be
sold on board the ship Bance Island, on Tuesday the 6th of May next, at Ashley Ferry; a choice cargo of about
150 fine healthy NEGROES, just arrived from the Windward & Rice Coast," reads the firm's eighteenth-century
ad. "The utmost care has already been taken, and shall be continued, to keep them free from the least danger of
being infected with the SMALL POX, no boat having been on board, and all other communication with people
8 from Charles-Town prevented."
Selling human flesh is an ancient practice, and one that seems to find a new manifestation in every age. It's not
impossible to imagine an Austin, Laurens & Appleby-like advertisement appearing somewhere on the Web, or
perhaps in a student newspaper at a prestigious university.
The New York Times recently reported that the following ad--illustrated with drawings of a baby carriage and a
stork delivery--has been appearing in select college newspapers across the country: EGG DONOR NEEDED /
LARGE FINANCIAL INCENTIVE / INTELLIGENT, ATHLETIC EGG DONOR NEEDED / FOR LOVING
FAMILY / YOU MUST BE AT LEAST 5'10" / HAVE A 1400+ SAT SCORE / POSSESS NO MAJOR
FAMILY MEDICAL ISSUES / $50,000 / FREE MEDICAL SCREENING / ALL EXPENSES PAID.
What, no blonde hair, blue eyes, and pure Aryan bloodline required? If this pitch for a eugenically "superior"
donor is any indication, American culture seems to have made as little progress over the last 250 years in securing
the intrinsic dignity of human life as it has in elevating the quality of advertising copy. For when it comes to the
commercialization of human reproduction and the marketing of human eggs, we are fast returning to a world
where persons carry a price tag, and where the cash value of some persons (or at least of their genetic
"endowment") is far greater than that of others. Still, it is hard to believe that campus newspapers, otherwise
notoriously sensitive about economic and social injustice, as well as the exploitation of women and minorities,
would see fit to run such ads. Egg donation, after all, entails both present and possible future medical risk, not to
mention that donors are selling their own genetic progeny to the highest bidder. Are nineteen-year-olds able to
make truly informed decisions about such things? Is consent voluntary or subtly coerced when such large sums of
money are involved?
The response to the ad has been robust--after all, $50,000 will pay almost two years' tuition at an Ivy League
school. Of course, there is an aspect of absurdity in the idea of screening a genetic reproductive partner on the
basis of SAT scores and height. One can imagine a whole new SAT coaching industry springing up to help dolts
with a meager 1350 SAT qualify for egg donation. Athletic coaches will be swamped with requests from the egg-
bearing but uncoordinated. Or think about the potential for graft and corruption in the business of certifying that
candidates have "no major medical issues." And won't a few vertically challenged prospective donors, stunted at a
mere 5'9", devise clever ways to add an extra inch? Already it appears that students at less prestigious state
colleges and universities are demanding equal opportunity in the egg race. Will today's egg procurers, following
in the entrepreneurial footsteps of Austin, Laurens & Appleby, let boatloads of such "fine, healthy" specimens go
to waste?
A year ago on this page ("Eggs for Sale," March 27, 1998), we noted the moral dangers and the threat to human
dignity signaled by the escalation of fees for donor eggs. At that time, Saint Barnabas Medical Center in New
Jersey had made headlines by upping its fee to $5,000. That looks like chump change now. There is little
surprising in the most recent tenfold increase in what people are willing to pay to gain a genetic advantage--some
of it real, some of it illusory--for their children. The logic of the marketplace is inexorable. If left unregulated by
the medical profession or by the state, the business of reproductive technology will become little more than a tool
of the wealthy and an increasing rebuke to those who forswear such opportunities for eugenic "improvement." In
the widespread practice of aborting Down's syndrome and other "defective" fetuses, American society is already
establishing a dangerous pattern for its genetic future. These private "choices" implicitly fuel resentment against
those who "unnecessarily" bring handicapped children into the world, not to mention against the handicapped
themselves and their "cost" to society. And as the $50,000 egg ad exemplifies, it is but a small step in logic from
aborting for physical or mental handicaps to selecting or engineering for intelligence, height, athletic ability, or
9 other "desirable" qualities. Bryan Appleyard writes in his important new book Brave New Worlds: Staying
Human in the Genetic Future (Viking), the "key problem with privatized eugenics [is that] it amounts to a
judgment on the existing human population." Appleyard warns that the more control technology gives us over
procreation and genetics--and it will give us increasing control over attributes such as sex, intelligence, and
physical size--the easier it becomes to "generate new classes of human inferiority."
Advocates for untrammeled "reproductive freedom" argue that genetic information and the spread of private
eugenic practices will not threaten the dignity of those who may be regarded as mentally or physically "inferior."
That judgment seems naive at best, if not disingenuous. We are just beginning to feel the subtly corrosive effects
that eugenic abortion and genetic screening have on our ideas about the value of children and human life, the
meaning of sex and procreation, and the nature of the family. Yet already our children need only open their
college newspapers to see how the new classes of human superiority and inferiority are taking shape.
ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF SPERM AND EGG SELLING
(from http://www.princeton.edu/~ldg/wws320index)
BUT FIRST, A FEW QUICK FACTS ABOUT INFERTILITY
1. 1. Infertility is more than simply an inconvenience; it is "a disease of the
reproductive system that impairs the body's ability to perform the basic function of
reproduction."
2. 2. Over six million Americans, about ten percent of the reproductive age population,
are infertile.
3. 3. Eighty-five to ninety percent of infertility cases can be treated with conventional
medical therapies such as medication or surgery.
4. 4. In vitro fertilization and similar treatments account for about 5% of infertility
services. (Information from the American Society for Reproductive
Medicine.)
5. 5. It is estimated that 50 to 80 million people worldwide experience some form of
fertility problems, according to the World Health Organization.
ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF BOTH SPERM AND EGG SELLING
1. 1. In the United States, individual rights to privacy and liberty are highly valued.
Individuals have the right to decide what to do with their bodies. By preventing the
sale of body parts, some say we are denying people's fundamental rights to own
themselves. Of all the things in life that we ever own, the only thing we truly own
throughout is our body, and yet we have no legal ownership of it. Why can we harm
our bodies by smoking or drinking or help our bodies by exercising, and not sell parts
of our bodies as we please? Why is it that only one use of our bodies is restricted,
while in every other case our bodies are seen only as our own.
2. 2. It is legal to receive compensation for donating other types of body tissue, such as
blood and bone marrow. Sperm and eggs are not different.
ARGUMENTS THAT APPLY SPECIFICALLY TO EGG SELLING
10
1. 1. While it is relatively safe, the process of obtaining eggs involves time,
discomfort, and some risk to the woman, for which she should be compensated
financially.
2. 2. Because the desire to have a biological child of one’s own is so strong, infertility
is a serious disease. It is common for infertility to cause psychological problems as
well
3. 3. If a woman cannot find a relative or friend who is willing to donate eggs to treat
her medical condition, there should be another way for her to receive eggs. Since
paying other women for their eggs is the only way to attain eggs and thus treat some
women’s medical condition, it should be allowed.
RESPONSES TO OBJECTIONS
1. For egg donation, there is a potential risk to the woman’s health. Women who donate eggs are
informed of the potential risks. Therefore they are able to make educated decisions regarding
their choice.
In addition, in America, we allow people to do many things that have the potential to harm their
health. We tolerate people working in dangerous jobs, for example those that expose them to
carcinogenic chemicals, and we tolerate men selling their bodies in high-risk medical
experimentation.
2. Sperm and egg selling are equivalent to baby selling. Many people hear of catalogues of
sperm donors and online databases of egg donors that couples can choose from and view them as
attempts buy an ideal child. However, they are only buying the egg or sperm of the donor. As
one woman considering using an egg donor commented, "Even if you try to tailor the genes to
yourself, it's always a gamble. You never know what you're going to get. People just want a
healthy child."
Wendy Somers, the director of the Colorado-based Creating Families, A Center for Surrogacy
and Egg Donation, Inc. acknowledges this too. "People usually want to pick an egg donor who
resembles the wife's physical characteristic." she said. "But it's a crap shoot - you never know
how a baby is going to turn out. Whether you're looking for someone who resembles you or
Christie Brinkley, if you're expecting Einstein's brain or Robin Williams' sense of humor, you
might not get it."
Some well-educated bioethicists are clear on this matter. Dr. Jeffrey Kahn, the Director of the
Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota, who also writes an "Ethics Matters" column
for CNN.com, says that "eggs don't guarantee children" and that buying eggs "buys no more than
the right to use eggs to try to conceive."
3. Selling sperm and eggs is a form of eugenics. Eugenics is the concept that it is important to
add more better genes to the human gene pool and to reduce the number of bad genes added to
the gene pool. Most people find eugenics troubling only when eugenic policies trample on
certain people's rights to liberty or their reproductive rights. Selling sperm and eggs does not, in
any way, inhibit a person's reproductive choices -- instead, it broadens them. Thus, while some
sperm and egg banks may espouse eugenic principles, no problems are caused since, in the end, it
is individuals that buy the sperm and eggs and use them.
11 4. Sperm and egg selling will contribute to the exploitation of the poor. For the most part, this
has proven not to be true.
In addition, if the selling of sperm and eggs remains unregulated, it will work similarly to other
markets, where better products are worth more money. Most people consider a poor person's
blood to be similar to a rich person's blood. But most people would probably think that a person
is poor due to a lack of intelligence or desire to work hard. They will not want genes that might
hurt their child's chances for success, and thus they will not pay as much money for a poor
person's sperm or eggs.
5. Since the ethics of selling sperm and eggs is questionable, and since infertile couples have
viable alternatives to using sold eggs and sperm, such as adoption, it should not even be
considered. For many couples, in-vitro fertilization is the best of all options. If they were to
adopt, many couples worry about the prenatal care of their child. If they were to enter into a
surrogacy contract, the surrogate could back out of the contract and keep the child. In addition,
many mothers find it very important to experience the pregnancy of their child. Also, "the
women who opt for IVF [through a donated or bought egg] seem to focus more often on the
desire to feel the child is more 'their own'."
6. There is no screening or even checking of who's buying eggs. There are no laws, restrictions,
or regulations regarding who can become pregnant through natural conception. Why, when
technology facilitates conception, should reproduction be viewed differently?
12
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