Egg Futures

I rarely buy a Sunday paper anymore, but did last night (Sat.) on the way home from Vespers. I only now just looked at the front page Chicago Tribune headline story: The incredible, sellable egg: What was once a personal journey has become a booming business for donors and recruiters."

While the Chicago-based agency--ConceiveAbilities--is certainly in the matchmaking business, it doesn't charge a fee. In fact, this company will pay you--$7,000 to be exact--providing you're no older than 30, in excellent health and can spare a couple dozen artificially ripened eggs.

...Demand for eggs continues to rise, driven strongly by older women, as infertile families turn more quickly to egg donations in the quest for conception, and fees to donors edge upward. It has even spawned a cottage industry for lawyers and psychologists.

(Anything that gives more work for lawyers and psychologists, well, it just adds more to our gross domestic product!)

For the money, a donor, after passing blood and medical tests, screening to make sure ovaries and uterus are sound, and signing a contract, starts the process with a self-administered hormone injection, for 7 to 12 days. When a doctor says all systems go, the hormone HCG is injected. 36 hours later, light anesthesia is given through IV, and

the eggs are retrieved from the donor's ovaries via a small needle inserted through the vaginal wall into the ovaries, and the eggs are then vacuumed from each follicle. The entire procedure takes about 15-20 minutes. . . . The donor will usually stay in the doctor's office for one to two hours to recover and then is sent home. Rest recommended for the rest of the day. She may experience some mild cramping or light bleeding.

Meanwhile, millions of owners of other ovaries plunk down hard cash to pay for hormones that will aid their desperate attempt to achieve one hundred percent certainty that one of those potent eggs does not exit on its own and run into one of those pesky male donations, lest fertility be achieved. What a country.

Comments

[Bobby Winters]

Genesis 30
1And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.

2And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel: and he said, Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?

The eternal struggle. We need to say a prayer for Rachel so that God will remember her and open her womb.

[Darrel Hoerle]

Welcome to "Brave New World".

[Kathy Hanneman]

While I do not believe in artificial conception, the fact is there are large numbers of embryos that already exist in fertility clinic freezers. Of these, many were conceived from parents who would rather give them up for adoption than to see them destroyed or used for research. What a shame that most of those buying eggs (with all the negatives indicated by that procedure) could not bring one of these little one to term. I know the "Snowflake" program already exists but it's a shame that it is not utilized more.

[Labrialumn]

Could it be that they are unaware of the Snowflakes program?

Might publicity help?

Another factor may be that the couple wants at least one of them to be the biological parent. That is more of an observation than an argument for the practice.