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Will Women Sell Their Eggs? Researchers Want the Right to Buy Them
By Daniel McConchie | June 13, 2008
Having found that women are generally uninterested in going through a risky procurement procedure so scientists can use their eggs for cloning and embryonic stem cell research experiments, researchers are now calling for a repeal of state laws that currently ban financial payments for eggs according to the journal Nature.
To give a picture of how dry the applicant pool is, Kevin Eggan and Douglas Melton of Harvard University’s Stem Cell Institute spent two years and $100,000 on local advertising and could only secure a single egg donor - someone with ties to Harvard.
Because fertility clinics are allowed to pay for eggs, those women who had expressed interest in the Harvard program decided that they would rather be paid than donate. So researchers want the right to compete.
What most people don’t realize is what exactly a woman has to go through to donate eggs for any purpose. First, the woman must take fertility drugs to overstimulate their ovaries. Instead of the usual 1-2 eggs being released at a time, 10-15 eggs will be released. Periodic monitoring must take place to determine when the eggs will ripen. At the time of release, the woman must undergo laparoscopic surgery to obtain them. Side effects of the procedure range from mild discomfort to…infertility.
These researchers are willing to gamble on a young lady’s future ability to bear children in their frenetic quest for a supply of eggs just so they can create human life and then destroy it. Of course, the top candidates for this form of exploitation will be poor women looking for a quick way to make some cash.
If researchers fail at their effort to liberalize state laws on this issue, they may turn overseas where the pool of available women for exploitation is far larger and presumably less expensive to buy off. Even with the recent advances in stem cell research that opens the door to creating embryonic stem cells without the need to create and destroy embryos, it seems nothing will detour these scientists who have dedicated their careers to healing some by destroying others. It just may take greasing the wheels of destruction with a little cash, that’s all.
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Topics: Stem Cell Research |
June 16th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
[...] McConchie reports on the Americans United for Life Blog. He writes: Having found that women are generally uninterested in going through a risky [...]
June 30th, 2008 at 10:26 am
I am not well read in this subject, however I will tell you that the end result in this kind of practice is worse than you could ever know.
My daughter had her system manipulated twice to produce eggs to sell while she was in school.
The health issues that followed proved to be almost deadly for her.
If she had not done this and did not have a bad doctor, she would still be healthy.
It messed up her body and mind. She is basically suffering from emotional and mental illness now.
It also caused problems for the whole family who did not support selling part of the family.
That isn’t a big issue with me as the state of my daughter now.
There are more side-effects other than just infertility at hand with selling your eggs.
Please adopt if you want children.