College women selling eggs to finance degrees

April 30, 2006

I saw a guy on TV and he thinks he may have up to 200 kids from selling his sperm. Anyway there are all these half siblings finding each other now from a website which has numbers for sperm donors listed, which they used. Then someone can see if their own kid has brothers and sisters. There was one poor teenage prodigy looking for his then college student father, and he was a genius in aerospace engineering along with a few other things. His mother admitted she wasn't overtly bright. But then I've heard of men being abducted and having dozens of alien hybrids kids as well. Strange world. Nicki

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12209274/site/newsweek/

Babies to Order With up to $50k for one little egg, colleges have become the breeding ground for the booming fertility market.

By Sarah Kliff

Current Magazine

Summer 2006 issue - Three years out of graduate school, Julia Derek has twelve kids. Or so she thinks. As a penniless senior at George Mason University, she spotted an ad in The Washington Post from a couple looking to buy a young woman’s eggs. Ten years, 12 donations, $50,000, and one successfully financed postgraduate degree later, Derek, now the author of “Confessions of a Serial Egg Donor,” explains the appeal of egg donation: “You’re doing a good thing, it feels good that people want you, it’s cool to spread your genes…It seems like a great thing to make money on.”

And college students can make a lot of money. An examination of campus dailies suggests just how much the DNA of an educated young woman who fits the requirements of the recipients might be worth. An ad in the Columbia Spectator promises $12,000 to a Caucasian student with brown hair and an SAT score above 1300, while two in the Harvard Crimson offer $35,000 to “one truly exceptional woman who is attractive, athletic, under the age of 29” and $50,000 to “an extraordinary egg donor. Must be between the ages of 18 and 26.”

“It’s really easy to get hooked,” says Derek, who initially became interested in egg donation when she realized it could substitute for a part-time job. “For a student it’s a ridiculous amount of money.”

Egg HuntThe going price of a student’s eggs has soared in recent years. While U.S. law prohibits the sale of any body part, donors can be compensated for the inconveniences of a medical procedure. In 1984, couples or agencies typically paid egg donors around $250. Today, ovum donation agencies such as A Perfect Match consistently advertise single egg donations for as much as $25,000 to $100,000.

“Many times a donor will need to be away from home, jobs, or school for up to 10 to 12 days,” Darlene Pinkerton, director of A Perfect Match, explains in an email. “I feel they deserve to be paid a higher amount when their lives are so disrupted.”

For many cash-strapped females, the chance of financing two years of tuition or a postgraduate degree with a simple operation seems like a no-brainer. And egg brokers know exactly how to target this money-hungry population. Campus dailies run large ads on a regular basis, and some newspapers, including The Stanford Daily and Columbia Spectator, devote entire online sections to couples’ searches for egg and sperm donors.

“It makes the most sense to advertise in places where we will be able to attract women in the ideal age range,” says Pinkerton. Not only are college students the best biological candidates to target, they are also easily lured by large sums of money.

Derek recalls how her early donations substituted for a part-time job. “For someone who has no money, [even] $3,000 is a lot,” says Derek, who began donating in 1996. “To me, it seemed like a lot of money; I didn’t have that much at the time.”

With all these financial considerations in play, Derek contends that egg donation is not the appropriate term. “It’s being an egg seller,” Derek says bluntly of her experience. “It’s nothing else but that. It sounds kind of crass, but you are selling your eggs. That’s what they’re paying egg donors for.”

The financial incentives are high enough to draw young women back to the operating table again and again. Despite medical complications after her first surgery, Derek’s donation numbers headed into double digits as she paid her way through college.

“It’s difficult to stop if it’s easy,” recalls Derek. “I kept going; I thought, Just one more… We kind of played with fire; we just kept going until my body couldn’t handle doing it anymore. It happened gradually.”

Risky BusinessMany donors, keen to make a quick buck and confident in their health, pay little attention to the risks involved. A 2001 study by Dr. Andrea Gurmankin Levy, an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, found that many agencies do not provide complete information about the health risks involved.

Unlike sperm donation, the female procedure is both lengthy and invasive. First, the donor must take oral contraceptives to synchronize her menstrual cycle with the recipient’s. Then she must regularly inject the drug Lupron, which shuts down the normal ovarian stimulation process. After two weeks of self-administered shots, donors receive further injections that stimulate the ovaries. Finally, a needle is inserted through the vaginal wall to withdraw the eggs while the patient is anesthetized. The whole process takes approximately six weeks.

Donors not only make a lengthy time commitment—difficult enough when juggling classes and surgery—but may also face medical complications. Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome occurs in one percent of all donation cases and can cause a life-threatening build-up of fluid around the heart and lungs. Donors also risk infection and adverse reactions to the anesthesia. Other may experience significant discomfort.

“The majority of egg donors can breeze through this,” says Dr. Mark V. Sauer, director of the Center for Women’s Reproductive Care and professor at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. “But some people are going to have these complications and not everybody, especially younger women, thinks of this. A lot of programs don’t define who pays the bills if something goes wrong.” If things do go wrong, an 18-year-old donor could face major debt as well as ongoing health concerns. “I’ve seen donors quite upset to find they’re hospitalized with a $20,000 bill, which they assumed would be paid because they were an egg donor,” says Sauer.

Bad EggsNone of this stands out in the short, simple ads that grab students’ attention with six-figure sums. Many health experts maintain that the average female student has no idea what she is getting herself into. As Derek says, “The biggest problem is they target really young women. Eighteen is ridiculous; nobody knows what they’re doing at 18.”

Many egg-broker agencies try to safeguard against such situations through a screening process intended to eliminate donors psychologically unprepared for egg donation. A Perfect Match is even more selective than the Ivy League schools it recruits from; the agency accepts only eight to ten percent of its applicants. Donors at the Columbia University Center for Women’s Reproductive Health must complete a 28-page questionnaire on their medical, psychosocial, and family background.

But the donation agency may already be hiding potential health risks before the donor gets to page one of the questionnaire. “It appears that some programs are not being completely upfront to a prospective donor in a preliminary call,” says Gurmankin Levy. Even the large sums of money up for grabs may not be what they seem.

Six-digit figures are far from the norm, according to Sauer, who has been performing egg donation procedures for over twenty years. Most women actually receive $2,000 to $8,000 in compensation. And while recruiting from an elite academic gene pool may up the offer, ads that put forward large sums of money for specific characteristics will frequently refuse to pay the advertised amount if you’re not that perfect 5’10”, athletic, Jewish female with a 1500 on your SAT.

“It’s a bait and switch approach used by a lot of lawyers and brokers,” he contends. “It solicits huge responses and you might get one thousand inquiries. When donors don’t match the exact criteria advertised, they’re then offered a lower amount. To me, it seems really sleazy.”

Students interested in egg donation are better off going to their own campus medical centers. “I would be a little bit reluctant to see some of these broker agencies,” Sauer warns. “They have no clue, they’re not doctors, most haven’t had any first-hand experience; they’re looking for a payday that they get through making a referral.”

Sellers beware—egg donors hoping for a quick profit can actually end up paying a price instead. While Derek managed to earn $50,000 through her dozen donations and expresses few regrets about her own involvement in the egg industry, she warns today’s donors to thoroughly explore all other options before taking the plunge.

“It should be an absolute last resort, donating eggs,” Derek advises, stressing the effort involved. “If students can get a job, in the long run it will be better for them. Maybe do it once. But it’s so hard to do—I think it’s better to get a job.” It’s certainly something to consider before you put all your eggs in this basket.

Sarah Kliff is a junior at Washington University in St. Louis whose eggs are not currently on the market. She’s the incoming Editor in Chief of her campus newspaper, Student Life, and a former writer for Humanites Magazine and St. Louis Magazine.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12209274/site/newsweek/