IVF testing: Patients will pay around £3,000 for donor eggs, on top of the £5,000 fee for IVF
Britain's first human egg bank launches today to help growing numbers of women who delay motherhood.
Donors will be paid up to £750 for their eggs which will be given to patients who are unable to produce healthy ones of their own.
The clinic behind the scheme says it is a practical way of plugging the shortage of donors and helping patients achieve their dream of having a family.
It is also hoped that access to a British egg bank will deter IVF patients from seeking treatment in countries with poor safety records.
Patients will pay around £3,000 for donor eggs, on top of the £5,000 fee for IVF. But critics fear the vulnerable will be exploited, with cash-strapped young women signing up as donors without fully understanding the risks.
The drugs used to boost egg production before donation can cause ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome – a potentially fatal condition in which the ovaries are unable to cope with the extra eggs released.
Women who donate their eggs while young could also face the problem of being unable to conceive in later years – knowing that they have biological children being raised by someone else.
Demand for donor eggs is outstripping supply, partly because more women are delaying motherhood to a time when the odds of becoming pregnant with their own eggs are low.
With some waiting lists years long, the country’s fertility watchdog recently trebled the maximum amount of compensation for ‘effort, time and pain’ paid to donors to £750.
The London Egg Bank, which is a partnership between the Bridge Centre and the London Women’s Clinic, says the payment will cover donors’ travel expenses, time off work and the cost of any childcare.
Human egg tanks at the Assisted reproduction and gynaecology centre. Britain's first human egg bank will be launched this week
It points out that women need to visit the clinic up to eight times before their eggs are removed.
Dr Kamal Ahuja, director of the London Women’s Clinic, expects most donors to be professionals who are already parents and want others to experience the joy of motherhood.
He said many egg donors have ‘seen infertility at close hand among their friends and family’ or ‘want to give something back’.
‘Many donors have children of their own and are in settled family relationships. They are keen to donate their eggs but have never been encouraged to do so.’
But Josephine Quintavalle, of campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: ‘With money so scarce at the moment one can imagine vulnerable young women considering this a useful way to make ends meet.’
Donors will receive counselling. They will also be told that any children born from their eggs will have the right to trace them at 18.
Anna Smajdor, a medical ethicist at the University of East Anglia, said: ‘The new egg bank may reduce the incentives to buy eggs from abroad – and the danger of exploitation that this involves.
‘But it represents another step towards the separation of reproductive processes into commodifiable components, a process that in itself raises fundamental ethical questions.’
Karen Richmond, 53, with her daughter Georgia
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2423073/First-private-IVF-egg-bank-opens-today-Clinic-pays-donors-750-help-women-motherhood.html#ixzz2fAbJppQx
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