A Contrversial Look at Bioethics and Egg Donation

The infertility industry in the United States has grown to a multi-billion dollar business. What is its main commodity? Human eggs. Young women all over the world are solicited by ads—via college campus bulletin boards, social media, online classifieds—offering up to $100,000 for their “donated” eggs, to “help make someone’s dream come true.” But who is this egg donor? Is she treated justly? What are the short- and long-term risks to her health? The answers to these questions will disturb you . . .

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Produced by The Center for Bioethics and Culture (Lines That Divide, 2009), Eggsploitation spotlights the booming business of human eggs told through the tragic and revealing stories of real women who became involved and whose lives have been changed forever.

Eggsploitation makes a powerful, provocative and, ultimately, modest proposal: women who consider donating eggs have a right to complete information on the risks involved. Lured by promises of sometimes desperately needed money and a chance to help another woman, vulnerable young women face unknown dangers to their health in an unregulated industry. Eggsploitation is a compelling call for oversight and research so that egg donors can be truly informed before giving consent.

     Patricia Ireland, President of NOW (National Organization for Women) 1991-2001, author of What Women Want

It is a scandal that the infertility industry has gone so many years without collecting adequate safety data on the risks of multiple egg extraction. This makes informed consent impossible for the thousands of young women now undergoing so-called ‘egg donation’ procedures. Every young woman considering ‘egg donation’ as a way to generate income for school tuition or other critical expenditures should see this film first. And policy makers need to insist that we finally conduct the research that should have been done years ago.

     Judy Norsigian, Executive Director, Our Bodies Ourselves

I've been a women's rights advocate since 1963, but this film was an eye-opener for me because I knew nothing about the multi- billion dollar egg donation industry, the physical risks to young women that accompany egg donation, and the need for research in this area.

I hope this film gets the wide distribution it deserves because the information in it is vital for young women in the US and abroad, their significant others, their families, and their societies.

     Sonia Pressman Fuentes, Lawyer, Author, Public Speaker, Feminist Activist;
     Cofounder of NOW (National Organization for Women); First Woman Attorney,
     Office of the General Counsel, EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission)

This powerful, important and informative documentary gives viewers true insight into the egg donation industry and helps us to better understand the desperate need for regulation and oversight. All prospective egg donors (and recipients) as well as all practitioners and agency employees in the egg donation industry should be required to watch this film!

     Wendy Kramer, Director and Co-Founder, Donor Sibling Registry

Eggsploitation is a powerful and compelling film on the extreme risks and disregard shown to women . . . a must see for all egg donors and fertility patients. The infertility industry's practice of reproductive endocriminology is a "dirty little secret" and should be secret no more.

     Lynne Millican, Founder, LupronVictimsHub.com

What fertility clinics and egg donation agencies may not tell you. This film should be seen by any woman considering becoming—or using—an egg donor so that she can better understand the medical risks involved.

     Diane Allen, Infertility Network, Canada

Eggsploitation is a compelling and revealing documentary that gives the viewer an up-close look at the flipside of the infertility industry. You will meet women whose lives were changed forever after undergoing the procedure for egg donation. Their disturbing and heart wrenching stories tell a cautionary tale to all women who are considering egg donation for the purpose of in-vitro fertilization or embryonic stem cell research. A must see film for researchers, physicians, professors, college students and feminists.

     Kelly Vincent-Brunacini, President, Feminists Choosing Life New York

One blogger says
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/ellenpainterdollar/2012/01/eggsploitations-bad-science/

Eggsploitation’s overall message is that the combination of infertile patients desperate for viable eggs and young women desperate for money leads to an exploitative system in which no one is looking out for egg donors’ well-being. It argues that donors, who must go through the same medical procedures as IVF patients do (daily hormone injections and surgical retrieval of eggs), are participating in a potentially risky procedure without truly informed consent.

I have no argument with this message. I have written often about how the lack of oversight of the fertility industry, combined with market pressures, seriously compromise the ability of those involved (both patients and donors) to make thoughtful, deliberate, and informed decisions about the medical, emotional, financial, and ethical dimensions of reproductive technology.

My complaint with this film is not with its message, but with its method. It relies almost solely on anecdote to illustrate the possible risks of egg donation, focusing on the admittedly compelling stories of egg donors who had serious medical complications after donation.

I love anecdote. I put a lot of stock in people’s stories of dealing with infertility, genetic disorders, troubling prenatal diagnoses, etc. So my problem with Eggsploitation is not that it puts stories front and center. (In fact, one of the things I struggle to understand is why several of this filmmaker’s colleagues and supporters have been so vocal in criticizing my “narrative,” or story-based approach to reproductive ethics, while also praising a film that is almost all story. Go figure.)

My problem with the film is that it uses several egg donors’ stories as a scare tactic to imply that fertility drugs cause serious illnesses, including potentially fatal cancers, without providing data to back up those claims.
Fertility drugs may indeed cause serious illnesses, including cancers, as I discussed in Thursday’s post. But research is ongoing, and likely not occurring at the pace it should be given the growth of fertility medicine; one of the film’s arguments is that clinicians are so focused on getting people pregnant that they are not adequately concerned with women’s health, which is a reasonable argument.