Infertility

Even more amazing is how Bonds has so far escaped any punishment outside of the court of public opinion.

He got a break when the principals of the BALCO scandal all pleaded guilty and avoided what would have been an embarrassing - and revealing - trial in court and, without the publication of the book, would have likely gotten through another season unscathed.

That season starts a week from now, with Bonds just seven home runs from breaking Babe Ruth's mark of 714.

The Giants say they plan to celebrate the occasion, but it had better happen at home because it could be an ugly scene on the road.

The truth is Bonds - and the juiced sluggers before him - are a disgrace to the game.

Their home run records are meaningless and they have no business in the record books or the Hall of Fame.

The best lawyers in San Francisco can't find a way to spin that enough.

- Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press.

Write to him at tdahlbergap.org Copyright 2006 Associated Press.

All rights reserved.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Posted by Caddell on Sat Mar 25, 2006 05:46 pm I cannot believe that he is talking about he ...

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 US, who made tens of thousands of dollars in nine egg "donations" to private US clinics.

In Confessions of a Serial Egg Donor, 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 US 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.

Romanian lawyer Dr George Magureanu complained in his own country and at the European parliament last year about the treatment of two young women - Alina, 19, and Raluca, 24 - who gave their eggs to the Globalart Clinic in Bucharest in return for "compensation" payments of £140.

The women, who worked in a mattress factory for £57 a month, claim that the clinic, which had an egg-sharing arrangement with the private Bridge Centre in London, shut its doors on them when they developed health problems after egg donation.

Dame Suzi Leather, chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Aut...

The figures also show that British clinics have the highest rate of complications caused by specialised drugs used for in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), and the highest rate of abortion of healthy IVF babies with a technique called “foetal reduction”.

The procedure involves placing two embryos in the woman’s womb in the hope that at least one of them will implant.

If both develop, one of the twins is destroyed by injection to stop its heart in order to increase the growth potential of the other.

“Many doctors consider the procedure ethically unacceptable,” said Karl Nygren, a professor of gynaecology in Stockholm, who compiled the ESHRE statistics.

“It also causes major depression.

The women mark the birthday of one child and the death day of the other.” British doctors admit clinics here cost more.

In Iceland, one of the most effective countries for IVF, it costs a couple £7,000 on average to achieve a successful pregnancy.

In Britain, one cycle of treatment can cost £10,000.

Gedis Grudzinskas, director of the Bridge Fertility Centre in London, said he was aware of some patients in Britain who had inves...