The following is a response to “The Human Egg Trade (How Canada’s Fertility Laws are failing donors, doctors, and parents)”.
The situation in Canada demonstrates how a lack of clear regulations for egg donation has a ripple effect of deviance from standard protocols in other parts of the process. The egg donation arrangement where a young woman was coerced to donate for an unofficial compensation even after having a failed cycle which produced no viable embryos and caused her painful hyperstimulation, was handled badly at every step, starting with egg donor/recipient relations to the medical procedure. What doctor would agree to cycle an egg donor after her last retrieval was so poor?
Doctors in the US scrupulously pore over egg donors’ records, and if there are any concerns she would not be allowed to donate again. Perhaps it is the ready availability of so many good candidates in the US that allows American doctors to be so picky. Doctors also have their own success rates at stake, which they need to maintain to attract patients.
The egg donation business in the US shows how a sensibly regulated free market works to the advantage of all, especially compared with Canada’s grey market or the UK, where they are so skittish that compensated donation is completely banned.
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