reports:
A sizable share of the U.S. organizations recruiting egg donors online don’t adhere to ethical guidelines, including failing to warn of the risks of the procedure and offering extra payment for traits like good looks, according to a U.S. study.
Women are recruited to donate eggs to fulfill a growing demand by couples seeking in-vitro fertilization (IVF), but a number of websites seeking to recruit them ignore standards set by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM).
“I would argue that there needs to be more attention from ASRM about these agencies, because you don’t want these women exploited,” said Robert Klitzman, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University and lead author of the study that appeared in the journal Fertility & Sterility.
Ethical standards set forth by the ASRM specify that donors should be at least 21 years old, and those between ages 18 and 20 should receive a psychiatric evaluation first.
Also, women are not to be paid for their eggs but compensated, equally, for their time. Donor traits such as college grades or previous successful donations should not result in higher payment.
But abiding by the recommendations is voluntary, and the guidelines carry no legal authority, though ASRM will sanction members who do not adhere to the guidelines. But that doesn’t cover non-member organizations.
September 13th, 2012 | 9:04 am
This is the buying and selling of what ought not to be bought and sold. Ethical guidelines cannot regulate something that is inherently unethical. Egg “donation” ought to be prohibited.
September 13th, 2012 | 10:57 am
Besides what David N said, with which I wholeheartedly agree, I found this sentence very telling:
“Ethical standards set forth by the ASRM specify that donors should be at least 21 years old, and those between ages 18 and 20 should receive a psychiatric evaluation first.”
Translation: it is unethical to use girls under 21, but if you’re going to be unethical in that way, please follow these ethical guidelines.
That kind of “this is not ethical, but we know you’re going to be unethical so please try to be a little less unethical” double-talk *built right into the ethical guidelines* is like a megaphone announcing that the whole enterprise is morally compromised from the start.
September 13th, 2012 | 11:13 am
David Nickol – I assume you’re equally against sperm donation?
September 13th, 2012 | 11:59 am
I assume you’re equally against sperm donation?
Ray Ingles,
I asked myself that when I wrote the above message, and I didn’t have a good answer. But in thinking about it, I am somewhat surprised to find myself leaning in the direction of opposing both egg donation and sperm donation. It might even be argued that sperm donation is the more indefensible of the two. For example, see the New York Times article One Sperm Donor, 150 Offspring. There is something very disturbing about the idea of mass producing one man’s children.
Put me down as tentatively opposed to sperm donation.
September 13th, 2012 | 12:28 pm
Doesn’t it make sense to “compensate” a college graduate at a greater rate than a high school drop out in every endeavor? Aren’t professional atheletes paid for their physical abilities? Aren’t individuals with expirience prefered over first timers? I guess this is eugenics.
September 13th, 2012 | 1:16 pm
My wife and met once with a fertility specialist. At one point he brought up the donor egg option. On the ride home, I told my wife, “That sounds too much like a high tech version of the Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar story for my comfort.”
Putting a couple of layers of technology in the midst of the process doesn’t negate that, in the end, I’d would have been fathering another woman’s child.
September 14th, 2012 | 7:10 am
In Civil Law countries, the Roman Law notion of “res extra commercium” [things outwith commerce] is applied to cases of assisted reproduction.
Thus, in the French Civil Code, Art 1128 lays down the general principle, “Only things in commerce can be the subject of an agreement”
No one can own human genetic material. This is excluded by the general terms of Art. 16-1 “The human body, its elements and its products may not form the subject of a patrimonial right.” This, too, is Roman – “Dominus membrorum suorum nemo videtur”: no-one is to be regarded as the owner of his own limbs, says Ulpian in D.9.2.13. pr.
Art. 16-5 reinforces Art 1128, by providing that “Agreements that have the effect of bestowing a patrimonial value to the human body, its elements or products are void” and, out of an abundance of caution, Art. 16-7 provides that “All agreements relating to procreation or gestation on account of a third party are void.”
This seems to me the correct approach.
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