Raffling motherhood on mother’s day : will it be buy one, get one free next?

The Sunday Times draws attention today, Mother’s Day (March 14), to a co-operative initiative between a US and a UK fertility clinic focusing on the marketing of human eggs to UK infertility patients. There will be a seminar in London this week and one of the attendees will be ‘awarded a free single donor egg IVF cycle’ as an added commercial incentive to attend the seminar.

‘The capacity of the IVF industry to commodify human life reaches a new low with this latest deplorable initiative,’ said Josephine Quintavalle, who directs CORE, a think-tank organization which confronts the many ethical issues associated with assisted reproduction.

‘Imagine a child one day finding out that he or she came into being thanks to such a blatantly commercial initiative? Won in a raffle?

‘The US clinic, which we do not even wish to name to avoid any form of promotion of their unseemly initiative, has a pick-and-mix application site online so that buyers can choose the best match to their own ethnic background. Eye colour, hair colour, educational background are all listed on their website, along with cutesy pictures of the women in question when they were children.

‘CORE is not prepared to describe the women selling their eggs as donors, as that camouflages what they are actually doing. They are simply getting money in exchange for body parts, certainly not participating in an altruistic transaction.

‘We have , nevertheless, great concern for these women’s welfare, as egg harvesting is by no means a risk-free process and many of those involved worldwide in the human egg market have suffered significantly as a result. The most serious consequences of egg collection include death, total or partial loss of fertility, various other major medical complications, and psychological distress as well.

‘The Sunday Times quotes one enthusiastic UK recipient who is expecting twins thanks to a woman in America who apparently produces 30 eggs at a time. No woman produces that many eggs naturally; it is only possible through ovarian hyperstimulation.

‘It should be noted, too, that in their relatively short reproductive life cycle women have a limited number of eggs and one can well envisage (as has already happened) that many of the women selling their eggs today will have to resort to buying eggs for themselves later on as their own ovarian function has been seriously impaired.

‘The IVF clinics involved in this initiative are feeding off the colossal vulnerability of wealthy infertile women at the expense of the welfare of equally vulnerable poorer younger women; not an edifying trade-off under any circumstances, but particularly not when children are involved.

‘Sale of human tissue, including human gametes, is prohibited across Europe. No UK clinic should be collaborating in anyway whatsoever with this totally unedifying US commercial practice.’

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 14th, 2010 at 4:31 pm and is filed under Sunday, March 14th, 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.