UK / US fertility drive
Filed under: IVF — Alan @ 3:06 am
The Bridge Centre fertility clinic in London has teamed up with the Genetics and IVF Institute in the U.S. to offer more British women a chance to get pregnant. The basis for the cooperative move is to provide healthy eggs from female donors in the U.S. to women in the U.K. To promote this alliance, an egg is being raffled in London, with the winner to receive £13,000 in free treatments in the U.S. provided by GIVF.
Under present law in Britain it is illegal to sell human eggs for profit; the maximum allowed for expenses to donors is £250. In contrast, donors in the U.S. can receive up to $10,000 (£6,600) for a single egg. One result of this these policies is that more women in the U.S. are willing to donate eggs, and the joint venture circumvents British law by offering treatments in the U.S. to recipients of eggs from U.S. donors.
Egg donors are rigorously screened for health, stability and intellectual capacity, among other characteristics, and the actual process of donating an egg or eggs is not easy. It involves taking drugs to increase ovarian production, and has been described as a long and painful procedure, with potential harmful results to the donor’s health and future fertility.
Critics of the programme claim that it is taking advantage of donors’ financial need, and that most of the U.S. donors (all graduates or students at American universities) are motivated by the money they are paid. A spokesman for the Bridge Centre said that the decision to raffle an egg is one that was made by the Americans.
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