A major reassessment of the rules governing fertility treatment could allow women to be paid thousands of pounds for donating their eggs to infertile couples.
The current compensation limit for undergoing the complex process of donating human eggs is £250. However, five years after its last review of the rules on the practice, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) is testing public attitudes on whether payments should be sharply increased. HFEA has launched a three-month public consultation on the issue calling for the widest possible participation from the British public.
The consultation will re-consider the ban on certain donations within the family, such as between brothers and sisters, and re-appraise the guidelines on handling familial donations, such as between sisters. In addition, the consultation will look at how many different families can use one donor's eggs or sperm. The current limit is 10, in order to reduce the risk of children from the same donor unknowingly starting a relationship.
HFEA’s plans would seek to prevent a large number of “fertility tourists” being driven abroad every year because of the drastic shortage of eggs in Britain. Sperm donors could also be compensated for their “inconvenience”.
Campaigners expressed their concern that the move will turn women’s bodies into “commodities”.
Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, opposed the move, stating:
“They haven't got enough eggs so they're upping the ante. It's an inducement to sell body parts, I think it’s humbug trying to call it donation or compensation. The best way to solve the problem is to encourage women to have children earlier and society needs to change to support that.”
Andrea Minichiello Williams, CEO of Christian Concern, said:
“Increasing the scope of payments will mean increasing the risk of vulnerable women selling their eggs for financial gain. This is not a step in the right direction.”
Dr Alex Lows, spokesperson for No2Eggsploitation, said: “HFEA plans to allow financial compensation for egg donors will lead to the exploitation of young women in financial stress.
“These financial incentives will induce women students with massively increased debts, and others, to take serious health risks and it is inevitable that many will be harmed.”
At the beginning of January 2011, Penny Jarvis, 25, a mother from Sheffield, said she wanted to freeze her eggs for her infertile daughter. Mrs Penny, who has four other children, wants to undergo the procedure so that her daughter will be able to use the eggs for an IVF pregnancy.
If Mrs Penny goes ahead with her plans, the test-tube baby would be a half-sibling of its birth mother as well as another child of its grandmother. The baby’s father would be fertilising his mother-in-law’s egg. In addition the baby’s aunts and uncles would also be its half-brothers and sisters.
Professor Lisa Jardine, head of the HFEA, said this could become more common in the future and she wants the consultation to consider the social implications, such as a child's grandmother also being their genetic mother. She stated that the HFEA will continue until at least 2013, and that any recommendations would be in place by then.
In November 2011, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali called on the government to set up a Commission on bio-ethics to replace the HFEA, which is soon to be abolished. The bishop, a former member of the HFEA, had asked the Prime Minister to establish a national forum for discussing important ethical issues that affect legislation or policy.
“It is very important that ethical reflection should keep up with scientific and medical developments. Those engaged in such work should be both supported and held accountable by the nation for their contribution to personal and social well-being,” he said.
Sources
Related sources
Christian Concern: The right to a child?
Christian Concern: Outrage at British Fertility Clinic’s human egg raffle.