Is Egg Donation Worth The Money?
Posted by: Annika Harris
Filed in:
news
2:00PM, Monday March 2nd 2009
An increasing number of women are trying to sell their eggs to earn cash during the financial crisis. An attractive, well-educated, healthy, twentysomething woman can get as much as $10,000 for donating her eggs, but is the money worth the headache and time it takes to be accepted as a donor?
Once an applicant is selected by an egg donation program as a likely to be chosen donor, the screening process continues with:
1. A physical examination, including a pelvic exam, blood tests, and an ultrasound to examine the uterus, ovaries, and other pelvic organs.
2. A detailed medical and psychological history questionnaire regarding the applicant and close blood relatives. Thisl include questions about cigarette, alcohol, and both prescription and illegal drug use, and some programs conduct unannounced drug tests during the screening process.
3. An infectious disease screening.
4. A test for STIs. The pelvic exam the donor’s cervix is scraped to test for gonorrhea and chlamydia, and a blood test determines whether the donor is carrying syphilis, hepatitis B or C, and HTLV-1, a rare virus that is linked to some cancers.
5. A blood test to determine HIV exposure.
6. Screening for inherited diseases.
7. A psychological evaluation to help the donor evaluate her desire to donate and work through ethical, emotional, and social issues.
Once an applicant is chosen to be a donor, the egg donation process begins:
1. The donor is given a medication to halt the normal functioning of the ovaries.
2. Then she must take medication to stimulate her ovaries to produce several more mature eggs than normal. The medication is injected for about ten days.
3. When the time is right, the donor is injected with another drug to prepare the eggs for retrieval.
4. The eggs are removed through a minor surgical procedure, in which a thin needle attached to an ultrasound probe is inserted into the vagina and suctions out the egg and liquid in each ovarian follicle.
The requirements for sperm donation are similar to egg donation, but much less invasive. That’s probably why men receive only about $35 to $60 for each specimen.
1. Sperm donors must be between the ages of 18 and 44.
2. Must not have been adopted.
3. Must be healthy.
4. Must not have a family history of genetic diseases.
5. Must have a willingness and ability to produce a specimen four to eight times per month in a lab.
6. Must make a six-month commitment.
After all this, do you think the benefits of egg donation, financial compensation and helping someone conceive, are worth the work? Tell us in the comments.
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CheeeeEEEEse
wrote on March 2 2009 @ 02:17 pm: [report]
I’ve actually looked into sperm donation as a secondary source of income, and I’m going to be masturbating anyway. It’s a lot tougher to get approved than those qualifications listed above, you have to exhibit qualities that couples would want to pick. A short, pimpily, no matter how smart, D&D;Dungeon Master isn’t going to get picked, something about marketability. Dumb ass tall people. Thats my rant.
Oh and you forgot that egg donors can do it twice a year.
Naneenya
wrote on March 2 2009 @ 02:23 pm: [report]
You can’t have sex during the entire egg donation process. Apparently that turns a lot of people away.
There was a segment on egg donation increasing as the recession gets worse on one of the morning shows a few weeks ago.
Fizzy
wrote on March 2 2009 @ 10:59 pm: [report]
$10,000 isn’t enough. My student loans are more than that!
zanrf
wrote on March 3 2009 @ 06:58 am: [report]
If you are looking for a sperm donor, a surrogate mother or a co-parenting match: this website to find your co-parenting partners (gay, straight, singles, couples…) http://www.co-parents.net
abbylyn
wrote on March 3 2009 @ 08:41 am: [report]
As someone who has donated her eggs, it is absolutely worth the money. The money was only half the reason I looked into it in the first place - you’re also giving an amazing gift to a couple that otherwise wouldn’t be able to have children.
crustee
wrote on May 9 2009 @ 07:00 am: [report]
Is it just me, or does this process seem a little like eugenics? I mean, I completely understand why people would want “genetically healthy” children, but is this implying that nutjobs (like me) shouldn’t reproduce?
writergirl
wrote on May 9 2009 @ 08:07 am: [report]
@ crustee—-
Its not so much that they don’t want the nutjobs reproducing….its that “genetically healthy” means that there is a better chance for the embryo to take from a donated egg.
We looked into this when I was going through fertility treatments. $10K is what the egg donor sees. There are additional costs levied against the recipient couple that total about $20K—and that’s for one IVF round.
Everything with infertility treatments centers around very fragile elements—the eggs and the embryo. Many eggs don’t ‘survive’ the fertilization process and many embryos don’t ‘survive’ the implantation process. IVF has a low sucess rate, despite Octo mom.
However, the healthier the egg, the healthier the embryo, the better off the chances of a pregnancy occuring.
Also, Naneenya, you can’t have sex while you are going through the procedure because there is a very good possibility you could wind up pregnant yourself, and with multiples. The hormones the egg donor is on is exceedingly similar if not the same the recipient woman is on—all of them stimulate pregnancy. Many egg donors produce something like 10 or more eggs per cycle. That’s why they don’t want you to have sex.
afmm
wrote on May 9 2009 @ 08:32 am: [report]
Interesting article. I read in Time that egg donation might have some health risks, such as future infertility. But no long term studies have been done so far.
spark
wrote on May 19 2009 @ 07:34 pm: [report]
crustee, it’s not implying that you shouldn’t reproduce on your own—only that other people don’t want your crazy-ass/ugly-ass kids!