Increase in egg donors raises concerns

[Sapphire Blue]

Increase in egg donors raises concerns
By MARTHA IRVINE, AP National Writer

(excerpt)

As more older moms look for help getting pregnant, younger women have become increasingly willing to part with their eggs. Some do it to help relatives and friends, or from a sense of altruism, but others openly acknowledge money is a big factor in their decision, prompting critics to worry that they're helping drive an unregulated market for human tissue.

(snip)

"Everyone does it for the money," says Dziura, the egg donor in New York. "No one would do that for free — maybe for your sister, but not for a stranger."

(snip)

"Egg Donors Wanted" ads are common on the Internet, in college newspapers and on city trains. And with no federal laws limiting donor fees — and fertility doctors conceding the difficulties of policing their own industry — one ethicist says that eggs have quickly become "commoditized."

It does feel a little more like the Wild West than it ought to," says Dr. Jeffrey Kahn, director of the University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics. And he only sees the problem growing as states such as California move closer to funding major stem-cell research, requiring more donor eggs.

"We worry that we offer people so much money that they are blind to the risk and their motivation is strictly the money," Kahn says.

That's the very reason, he notes, that it is illegal to sell an organ, such as a kidney, for donation. "So I'm not comfortable saying we should start that with human eggs," he says.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070219/ap_on_he_me/egg_donors_4

[Erika]

1. The GOP will probably pass legislation to make this a crime

They want to totally rule their "subjects".

[RB TexLa]

2. And the nerve of women in their 50's or 60's thinking they can have babies

:sarcasm: