Washington Square News(U-WIRE) NEW YORK - The ATM refuses to dispense cash and the receipt reads, "Insufficient funds." Suddenly the ads in the WSN become more tempting: "If $7,000 will feel great in your pocket, imagine what you'll feel in your heart. Become an egg donor and fulfill an infertile couple's dream."
Many egg donor programs and individual couples looking for donors advertise in student newspapers to target women between 21 and 32. The ads offer thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars for eggs, but it is not easy money. Egg donation is a more strenuous, lengthy and risky process than sperm donation. Instead of a copy of Playboy and a cup, egg donation entails extensive screening and tests; three types of medication, one of which requires 10 days of self-injections in the buttocks; frequent early morning checkups; and a short surgical procedure.
From the application to the recovery room, the whole process takes about two months. The fee compensates time spent, as well as the inconvenience of minor side effects like bloating, cramping and moodiness. There are also some rare but serious health risks, including hyperstimulation, a rare effect of fertility drugs causing the ovaries to swell, infection, internal bleeding and twisting of the ovaries, which must be surgically corrected.
The fertility drugs a donor takes were once suspected to cause cancer, but Dr. Frederick Licciardi, the director of the NYU School of Medicine Program for In Vitro Fertilization, Reproductive Surgery and Infertility, says there are no reliable studies indicating that fertility drugs are carcinogenic.
"We might need 20 more years, but right now it doesn't look like there's any [cancer risk] factor," Licciardi says.
Though $7,000 may seem like a lot of money to some, to others the gift of another woman's eggs is priceless. A donor egg allows an infertile couple to conceive a child that will be biologically connected to the recipient mother through her pregnancy, and genetically connected to the recipient father through his sperm. Some of the recipients are single women or lesbians, and this technology enables them to conceive without necessarily being fertile.
