Fertility doctors in Britain and America have been accused of commercialising human life after offering a human egg as a raffle prize.
The London Bridge Fertility, Gynaecology and Genetics Centre is raffling a human egg to promote its new ‘baby profiling’ service, in a manner designed to circumvent British IVF (in vitro fertilisation) laws. The raffle was held 17 March, to promote a tie-up between the Centre and the Genetics and IVF Institute (GIVF) in Fairfax, Virginia.
According to the conditions of the raffle, the winner will be able to pick the egg donor by racial background, upbringing and education. Since payment for profit is illegal in Britain, the £13,000 of free IVF treatment will be provided in America. Unlike in Britain, where donors are paid no more than £250 in expenses, the American donors can get up to £6,600 a time.
Mohamed Menabawey, Director of the Centre, which also has arrangements with clinics in Spain, the Ukraine and Crete, said:
‘This is how Americans do it – in order to attract people to seminars they offer one free treatment for people to come. I don't see why it should go down badly at all. People should welcome the idea of having access to a high quality service.’
Critics however have condemned the contest, intended to promote an international IVF scheme, as a ‘deplorable’ commercial venture.
Josephine Quintavalle, of think tank Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said:
‘The capacity of the IVF industry to commodify human life reaches a new low with this latest deplorable initiative.
‘Imagine a child one day finding out that he or she came into being thanks to such a blatantly commercial initiative.’
She said the American women giving eggs were not donors but ‘simply getting money in exchange for body parts’.
‘The IVF clinics involved in this initiative are feeding off the colossal vulnerability of wealthy infertile women at the expense of the welfare of equally vulnerable poorer younger women; not an edifying trade-off under any circumstances, but particularly not when children are involved,’ she said.
‘Sale of human tissue, including human gametes, is prohibited across Europe. No UK clinic should be collaborating in any way whatsoever.’
Commenting on the clinic’s project, a Daily Telegraph columnist wrote that ‘allowing would-be parents to raffle for the chance to choose the mother of their children on the basis of looks, ethnicity and intelligence, all I can say is that it's something Hitler could only have dreamt of.’