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Despite its provocative title (“Do Egg Donors Lie?“) this article was fair, but more interesting to me were the comments, which could not have been a clearer demonstration on how to separate the egg donation myth from the egg donation reality. Throughout, ignorant, typically negative comments from women who have only read or heard about egg donation are set straight by women who were egg donors or IVF patients themselves. Just about every woman who identified herself as a former egg donor had a positive experience.

There is apparently much confusion about how egg donors are selected, and what they go through once they are selected.

The egg donor screening process

You do not have to have a perfect family medical history with no illnesses at all in order to be accepted (that itself would arouse suspicion). You do have to be in excellent physical and mental health (free of genetic disease, not a smoker or drug user), and a normal body mass index (we use 27 as the BMI cut off). Egg donor agency directors review hundreds of applications and know how to sift out the promising applications from the not-so-promising. Much depends on individual judgment and the needs of the particular egg donation agency or clinic. A woman may be perfectly healthy and fertile but we may pass her by because we do not think we have a good match for her.

But the questionnaire is just the first step.

We refer throughout our site (see Conceiving With Donor Eggs) and on our blog to the ASRM’s [American Society for Reproductive Medicine] guidelines for egg donor compensation, first established in the year 2000 and restated in 2007.  Among other recommendations, they claim that egg donor compensation over $10,000 is, in their estimation, “inappropriate.”  Any member of the ASRM, that is, any legitimate IVF (in vitro fertilization) clinic or egg donation agency in this country, must abide by these guidelines in order to maintain their ASRM membership status. Therefore these guidelines have actually served as mandates; reputable agencies and IVF clinics have followed them, unchanged, for the past eleven years.

In a class action lawsuit filed in April 2011 in California, an egg donor has claimed the ASRM’s compensation cap illegal under the Sherman Act, accusing IVF clinics and agencies of restraint of trade and price fixing. The ASRM sent notice to its members today announcing that it has selected counsel and is beginning work on its defense.

We are eager to see how it is resolved.

Here is a positive and accurate article on egg donation, demonstrating that egg donors find the experience rewarding: Egg donors happy they helped, small study finds.  An excerpt from the article:

“Up until now we’ve known that donors are by and large very satisfied by their experience when it takes place, and now we see that for the vast majority the positive experience persists.”

– Andrea M. Braverman, director of complementary and alternative medicine at Reproductive Medicine Associates of New Jersey in Morristown

Yet another reaction to the Hastings Center report, this time in the New York Times (“Payment Offers to Egg Donors Prompt Scrutiny“).

Here’s the shocker: people are willing to pay more for highly desirable egg donors! This is hardly news, although it is reported as such.

These outrageous offers get publicity, but they are far from the mainstream, and in fact, probably bogus. For many recipients, compensation within the ethical limits can be a hardship.

Any SART and ASRM registered clinic pledges to abide by the guidelines of these organizations. If a clinic works with an agency donor, the clinic should make sure that the agency complies with these guidelines as well. Some clinics require a letter from us testifying to our compliance. Plenty of agencies are members of SART, even though the article implies otherwise.