Payments plan for egg
donors
Move to meet increasing demand at fertility
clinics
Sarah
Boseley, health editor Saturday November 6, 2004
The Guardian
Britain's fertility watchdog is considering
changing the rules to allow payments to people
who donate their sperm, eggs or embryos to
infertile couples.
The proposal - which will be part of a public
consultation launched by the Human Fertilisation
and Embryology Authority (HFEA) next week - will
be controversial. At present, men who supply
sperm or women who give eggs are allowed to
receive only £15 and expenses for travel and
time off work.
Critics are likely to claim the money could
prove an inducement to men and women to make a
decision they could come to regret - that of
helping to bring a child who is genetically half
their's into the world to be brought up by
somebody else.
In addition, the process of egg donation is
not easy and involves the woman taking potent
drugs to stimulate her ovaries.
But altruism has not been sufficient to fill
the demand. Eggs are in much shorter supply than
sperm.
For women who cannot produce eggs, a donation
is the only hope of bearing a child.
But a survey of the fertility clinics carried
out earlier this year by the HFEA found that 90%
were unable to meet demand, even though egg
sharing - where a woman undergoing fertility
treatment has her costs reduced in exchange for
donating some of her eggs - has been permitted.
The survey found that 38% of women had to wait
between 12 months and 18 months for an
altruistic donor to come forward, 8% waited
between 18 months and two years and 17% waited
more than two years.
Half the
clinics in the survey could not meet the demand
for donated sperm and there were difficulties in
matching donors and recipients from certain
ethnic groups. The clinics also reported an
increased demand from single women and lesbian
couples.
No recruitment
strategy for sperm donors was particularly
successful. Clinics reported putting adverts in
newspapers and posters in universities.
Sperm and egg
donation had been affected by the proposed
legislation to end the anonymity of donors so
their genetic children would be able to make
contact in the future.
A voluntary
register of adults conceived through donations
was launched in April by Melanie Johnson, the
public health minister.
The government
has ruled that children born after next year
will, when 18, have the right to know donors.
Few clinics use
donated embryos, but the same problems of
shortages and concern over the loss of anonymity
apply, they said. A quarter felt payments for
donors would help the situation and 30% felt the
HFEA's public consultation should include that
option.
Some of the
clinics were opposed to increased payments,
especially for egg donation, and the HFEA in its
discussion document on the survey results
highlights "the need to approach this ethically
difficult area sensitively".
An HFEA
spokeswoman said: "We need to ask the public
what they think." She added the consultation on
sperm, egg and embryo donation, which will be
launched on Thursday, is part of the wider
review of its powers and policies under the
Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act that the
authority has undertaken
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