The new parents beam, the babies gurgle and coo, and People magazine takes a picture of yet another family made possible by egg donation (you don't think all those 45-year-old actresses are just having twins by some crazy coincidence, do you?). But what happens to the woman whose biological material helped make it all possible? Her job done, the egg donor typically recedes into the background, a check for $5,000 (or more, or less) in her hand, gone without a trace.
Now some former donors and other advocates for women's health want that to change. While the Centers for Disease Control keeps track of the number of eggs donated to women facing infertility -- it was more than 15,000 in 2006 -- the donors of those eggs, and information about their health after serving as donors, is not followed in any way. Given that egg donation involves treatment with powerful hormones, many of which carry at least some cancer risk, the lack of follow-up and systematic tracking bothers many.
"Right now egg donors are treated like vendors, not as patients.
Patients need to be followed up," Jennifer Schneider told Time magazine. Schneider, a doctor, has become a critic of the way donors are treated ever since losing her own daughter, who donated three times and died of colon cancer at 31.
Even worse, many egg donors appear to lack basic information about even the short-term health risks they're taking on when they agree to donate. From the Time article:
In an article published in Fertility and Sterility
in November 2008, researchers found, for example, that 34% of former
egg donors didn't recall being aware at the time of donation of the
risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, the most common side effect.
The majority of donors experience at least the mild or moderate form of
this syndrome, which involves discomfort, bloating or nausea and
usually resolves itself on its own. The severe version of this syndrome
is rare - only 100 to 200 for every 100,000 women - but its
consequences can include kidney failure
and death. And then there are other side effects, such as bleeding,
infection and death, which are associated with any surgery performed
under general anesthesia. But fully 20% of the 80 donors interviewed said they didn't know there were any physical risks to egg donation at all.
With a growing number of families seeking advanced reproductive technology, and an increasing number of willing donors (motivated at least in part by economic woes, some clinics are reporting a jump of over 50% in the number of prospective donors over last year's numbers), egg donation isn't going away. But it's time to stop treating it as a simple exchange of money for risk, or even money for genetic material. Donors need more information, and clinics need to not only make sure they understand the risks but provide follow-up healthcare, as well as tracking outcomes so that future medical professionals -- and donors -- can understand the actual long-term risks. Right now there are no credible studies that can assess those risks -- the most frightening aspect of which is uterine cancer -- because no registry has ever existed.
Currently the American Society for Reproductive Medicine is consulting with fertility docs on a nonprofit, voluntary registry of both egg and sperm donors, but as recent controversies have made all too clear, self-regulation isn't a strength of the fertility industry (really, of any industry). One hopes that the parents who benefit from the technology that brought them babies will also remember the generosity and courage of the women who provided their eggs and push their clinics for better care and research -- and contact their political representatives to ask for the same from our government.
More by this author:
Another Hospital Baby Mix-Up, Now With Added Racism!
Spurred to Action by Natasha Richardson Death, Parents Save Girl
Child Support Suffers in a Recession, Too
Are Working Mothers (And Fathers) Discriminated Against?
