US clinic sparks debate in UK with donor-egg raffle

March 18, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

LONDON

An American infertility clinic seeking business in Britain has prompted fierce criticism by offering free eggs from a U.S. woman to one participant in a promotional seminar Wednesday evening in London.

The event has sparked a debate in Britain about the ethics of an event that many said violated the spirit, if not the letter, of a European Union law forbidding fertile women from being paid for their eggs.

Egg donors in the UK cannot be compensated more than $384 per month for travel and time off work.

The rule limits the number of donors and makes it very difficult for infertile women to obtain eggs in the UK and much of Europe. It is not illegal for Europeans to pay for eggs overseas, and for years infertile European women seeking eggs have traveled to America or other countries seeking eggs.

As part of a marketing push in the UK, the Virginia- based Genetics and IVF Institute had a free seminar for British couples Wednesday night and said one randomly chosen participant would win donor eggs.

To donate, a woman must undergo a monthlong treatment that involves injecting herself with hormones to stimulate the ovaries and then undergoing a procedure to retrieve several eggs.

The clinic’s prize is worth more than $10,000 — a $6,000 fee for the donor and $4,000 in medical costs associated with the hormone treatment and egg retrieval.

Other U.S. clinics have been known to pay women up to $35,000 for their eggs.

The Genetics and IVF Institute said its donors were college-educated women between 19 and 32. It has been giving away eggs in similar promotions in the U.S. for more than a year.

Because the winner of Wednesday’s lottery would travel to the U.S. to get eggs from a U.S. donor, the company’s paying for them does not break any British laws.

But British fertility experts slammed the event as a publicity stunt.

“There’s something shocking in the association of a raffle and giving away a human product,” said Dr. Francoise Shenfield, a fertility and medical ethics expert at University College London. “In Europe, we have the general idea that altruism is a good thing, and we don’t want to turn human body parts into a commodity.”