Posted on 03/16/2006 2:48:58 PM PST by Indy Pendance
Can't link but the gist of the article is, if you are a pretty, smart (SAT's over 1300), young, female college student, and need cash, sell your eggs on the internet for at least $10,000, and in some instances, $65,000.
I tried to make a deposit at a sperm bank. They demanded their toaster back.
<insert male joke here>
You can't survive on only $3.96 a day.
That's just WRONG.
That's beauty of the free market.. have enough cash and let someone else clean the house, tend the garden, birth the babies, tutor the kids...
Women have to take loads of hormones for a few months before harvesting the eggs. I have met a couple women who did this in their mid-20s and their bodies have never been the same.
It wasn't intended to be that way, let them reap what they sow.
I am trying to imagine some of these college girls abstaining from sex, alcohol and other detriments while on the hormones... That might deter 98% of them...LOL!
I have 3 daughters, check my page for my middle kid. The other two, no way would they do this, it's just another immoral path we've sunk to.
I did too, but felt kind of violated when I realized there was a camera right above their ATM....
My point was that the girls who would do this for money would most likely be the ones who do all the other stuff...
That has nothing to do with hormones. My body hasn't been the same as it was in my mid-20's since...well, since I was in my mid-20's.
For what it's worth, my younger sister donated three times in college and suffered no side effects from it. She now has three kids of her own, in addition to the four that were apparently born from her eggs. No harm done.
From a moral standpoint, it's really no different than giving a baby up for adoption.
My wife works in an infertility unit. The number of eggs a woman produces is finite. There is real damage done to the ovaries in egg donation that may lead to early menopause or later infertility problems for the donor. There are also risks associated with the drugs involved. It is likely to be many years before we learn what the full scope of unintended consequences of egg donation really are.
Overall, the rate of aneuploidy -- an abnormal number of chromosomes -- in such embryos was between 40% and 50%, but for some women as many as 83% of the embryos were abnormal, according to reports presented at a joint meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society.
We're playing in an area that shouldn't be played in. It'll bite us back one day.
Tell it to the writer of the article:
...But ASRM [ American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) — a leading trade group composed largely of fertility doctors ] acknowledges potential risks, including nausea and diarrhea, from a condition known as "ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome." More severe cases can result in shortness of breath and abdominal bloating. At the most serious, the group says, there is a "remote" risk of death. Donating may also create future fertility trouble for donors. And there is the possibility of emotional problems after donors relinquish parental rights to children conceived with their eggs
No matter what, egg retrieval scars the ovaries which will inhibit normal ovulation. No matter what, egg donation accelerates ovarian maturation. The population of donors has not been large for so long that we really know what the consequences are and won't for another ten to fifteen years. The sad fact is that the drug companies fund the bulk of the research which will delay and possibly obscure obtaining accurate information about a potential problem.
I'm not against legit medical stuff, it's the, 'I can sell my eggs and pay off my school loans' kinda thing.
We don't know and won't for a long time.
IMO the real culprit in female infertility is a school system that keeps them entrained until they're nearly thirty. There is no good reason for it, as early teens are easily capable of college level work if they get a superior primary education. My own kids (12 & 13) are there already and have been for over a year.
If I had to do it all over again, I'd home school in a heartbeat. My cousin did, she started in 1980, a real pioneer in the field. At the time, we thought she was goofy. 25 years later.....
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