Infertility

The web is littered with sites featuring cute US college students with eggs for sale.

The dark underbelly of the billion-dollar US fertility industry was exposed two years ago by Julia Derek, a Swedish student studying in the USA, who made tens of thousands of dollars in nine egg “donations” to private US clinics.

In Confessions of a Serial Egg Donor, Ms Derek described how donating eggs to fund her studies damaged her ovaries and left her an emotional wreck.

“Would some poor girl have to die before US clinics are properly regulated,” she asked.

But at least in Spain and the USA, there is some regulation.

In other parts of the world, a seedy trade is emerging in which poor women risk their lives, often for a pittance and for the benefit of richer women.

Professor Grudzinskas argues that the long-term solution is to pay donors, and that egg-sharing is already payment in kind.

“Altruism hasn’t worked but the financial incentive does,” he says.

The other solution would be for more women to accept — The Independent Discussion on this Editorial item Disclaimer: These are Internet generated discussion threads for which the The Statesman has no responsibility.

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