Do Women Who Donate Their Eggs Run a Health Risk?
By Sandra G. Boodman | The Washington Post | June 20, 2016
A transaction once shrouded in secrecy, the Internet now hosts a thriving and competitive marketplace for donors, largely supplanting leaflets on college bulletin boards and ads in campus newspapers, the traditional methods of recruiting fertile young women. Payment varies, currently starting at about $3,500 per cycle and sometimes exceeding $50,000, depending on the location of the clinic or egg brokerage and the donor’s characteristics. An Ivy League education, Asian descent (there is a paucity of donors), exceptional looks and a previous donation that led to a birth command higher reimbursement.
This article provides a comparison between the experience of an egg provider who did not suffer any complications as a result of the process with another woman who was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer after 10 rounds of egg retrieval.
It includes interviews with noted experts, including Timothy R. B. Johnson, chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan School of Medicine, and Judy Stern, professor of pathology and obstetrics and gynecology at Dartmouth, who oversees a voluntary database called the Infertility Family Research Registry.
Perinatal risks that may be associated with assisted reproductive technology (ART) and ovulation induction include multifetal gestations, prematurity, low birth weight, small for gestational age, perinatal mortality, cesarean delivery, placenta previa, abruptio placentae, preeclampsia, and birth defects. Although these risks are much higher in multifetal gestations, even singletons achieved with ART and ovulation induction may be at higher risk than singletons from naturally occurring pregnancies.
This report provides an overview of recent scientific literature on the long-term health effects of ovarian stimulation and egg retrieval, a specific component of ART used during in vitro fertilization (IVF), egg donation, and egg freezing. It is not a complete literature review but, as described, “an overall assessment of what is and what is not currently known, followed by recommendations for how to improve the information available about this aspect of reproductive health care.”
News broke this week that the first “three-parent” baby had been born. But the untested and controversial nature of the procedure that created the child, and the end run around public policy that it entailed, raise many more questions than answers.
This opinion piece, published on WBUR’s CommonHealth Blog, outlines the authors’ key concerns related to egg retrieval, both for infertility treatment and research.
