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I review about one hundred egg donor applications a week. Of those I receive, only about three or four get posted on our database. Some very good candidates never get posted because we don’t have good photos of them. Even the best candidates cannot be matched without good photos.

We just added “Photo Submission Guidelines” to our Information for Egg Donors and Egg Donor Application pages so donors can have a better understanding of how the photos should look.

Photos are required to post on your profile for recipients to view. Photos are essential to attracting prospective recipients to your profile. Recipients use photos to evaluate the donor’s resemblance to them, the donor’s attractiveness, and the donor’s demeanor, temperament, “vibe,” “energy,” or whatever you want to call it. So three important qualities are required of every photo: it needs to be clear, flattering, and show you with a pleasing expression.

I can’t tell you how many photos I receive that show candidates carousing in a dark bar (with a beer in her hand!) among a crowd of people, taken on a cellphone with an unflattering view up the nostrils and out of focus, in a ski suit and goggles or Halloween costume that conceal all her features, taken inside a dark, messy room with a flash that makes the eyes red and the complexion washed out, taken so close-up it’s scary, showing the donor with a funny face, a scowl, or her tongue sticking out,

NAFG President Sanford Benardo will be participating in a “Donor Egg Decision Making Seminar” sponsored by the Baystate Chapter of Resolve. It will take place at the Children’s Hospital in Waltham, MA on Saturday, February 7 from 9:30 AM to 5 PM.

Sanford will speak on “Finding a Donor and the Legal Issues” between 11:15 and 12:45. Other contributors will include NAFG team member Spencer Billings Nineberg, social worker Nancy Doctor, and Dr. Samuel Pang and Ann Moegle RN from Reproductive Science Center in Lexington, MA.

For more information, go to www.resolveofthebaystate.org.

Tonight, Cindy Hsu of CBS New York contributed yet another story about the growing popularity of egg donation, featuring Northeast Assisted Fertility Group’s egg donor program.

“If you’re motivated you can do a wonderful thing and help somebody and help yourself at the same time, but do not think that this is a way to walk into $10,000 and pick up your check,” said Northeast Assisted Fertility’s Sanford Bernardo. “In fact, the payment is not for your eggs. You’re not selling eggs. It’s for the time and suffering involved.”

Click here to see the video.

This time it’s in the Boston Herald. Sanford Benardo is quoted:

“Benardo said the egg donation and surrogacy agency has seen applications from potential egg donors double — the [egg donation] agency pays female donors a flat rate of $10,000 after a woman’s eggs are retrieved.”

The article acknowledges that making money through egg donation is not quick and easy. Furthermore, the depressed economy is diminishing the demand for egg donors, making it even harder.

Now that our database has grown to include about 80 egg donor candidates, we have made it much easier to navigate and search information.

Recipients can always view all the egg donors at once (organized with the most recent additions on top), but now they can also search by criteria: location, eye color, hair color, ethnicity, height, and education level. Recipients can also isolate all the repeat donors and exclude the reserved donors, if they like.

To see it for yourself, just contact me with your e-mail address and clinic name and location, and I’ll provide a user name and password. There is no fee to view our database.

We hope this new database makes searching for egg donors easier for our clients. But it of course does not replace our personalized customer service.

Recipients may contact Kathy Benardo, the egg donor program manager, any time by e-mail or phone: kbenardo@assistedfertility.com, (800) 710-1677.

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Northeast Assisted Fertility Group to be Featured on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” Next Week – Story on Egg Donation

<Click to watch the CNN video, “Egg Donors on the Rise”>

Now CNN has picked up on the “surge” in egg donation and they invited Sanford and me to participate in the story. They were especially interested in speaking with an egg donor who was motivated by the current economic downturn. A few of our fabulous donors agreed to participate in the story; they chose one who was sufficiently motivated by money.

Randi Kaye and her team came to our office today and were very professional. Ms. Kaye asked me questions about the relationship between the economy and the number of egg donation applicants we receive, and I agreed that there was an increase. She did veer into sensationalism on occasion:

“Just HOW desperate are these donors?”

“How do you respond to people who say this is baby selling?”

“How do you respond to the term ‘debt donors’?”

[Desperation is not a desirable quality in an egg donor. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine endorses compensation for egg donation as ethical (I handed them the ASRM position paper) and no one claims egg donation is baby selling. I never heard the term “debt donor.” My response to that one was “Huh?”: I trust they will edited that one out, and “debt donor” doesn’t catch on.]

In each case,

In Beyond Compensation:  Egg Donor Expenses and Financial Liability (2 of 3), we listed a few reasons why we do not support penalty clauses in egg donor contracts.  Here are a few more.

Penalty clauses in egg donor contracts are unduly coercive.

Although unenforceable, they do serve a psychological purpose: coerce the donor into compliance.  Reasonable compensation already serves as an incentive; no additional one is needed. Furthermore, by the time the egg donor has come to the contract stage, she has already demonstrated her compliance by showing up to all her screening appointments and following all the instructions of the medical staff, for which she has received no compensation at all.

The ASRM places caps on egg donor compensation in order to avoid undue coercion; threat of severe financial penalty is just as coercive as enticement through exorbitant compensation.

Penalty clauses in egg donor contracts undermine good will.

Contractually threatening to sue your egg donor can only sour the donor’s attitude toward you and the altruistic motives that compelled her to donate eggs in the first place.

An egg donor contract is unlike any other legal document: it is a statement of intentions and good will between two parties in a unique relationship. Recipients should honor and respect their donor, and express gratitude for her efforts to help them conceive. In turn, the egg donor will follow her medical instructions in the hopes that the donation will be successful.

In Beyond Compensation:  Egg Donor Expenses and Financial Liability (1 of 3), we claimed to stand against penalty clauses in egg donor contracts. Here is why.

Penalty clauses in egg donor contracts are unfair.

The penalty, if enforced, could well add up to thousands of dollars, which the egg donor very likely does not have. Should she take the chance to make $10K, but in case of an unexpected turn of events, get no money at all but instead have to pay thousands to someone else?  It is not a risk any attorney would advise a client to take. The donor is already putting herself at a medical risk; she should not have to put herself at a financial risk, too.

Penalty clauses in this type of “personal services” contract will probably be held unenforceable.

A judge would be hard-pressed to assess a money damage award against a woman who did not allow her donor eggs to be harvested, absent a showing of fraudulent intent.

The penalty for backing out is that the egg donor does not get paid: the deal is that you take a reasonable risk with your money; the donor takes a reasonable risk with her body. It’s not like you are purchasing a piece of property. We have never encountered a case of a recipient recovering expenses and damages from an egg donor who did not fulfill her obligations.

Apart from egg donor compensation (at a limit of $10,000 for her time and effort, according to the ASRM), our egg donors are entitled to reimbursement for other expenses incurred by the process. For local donors, these can include gas, tolls, parking, and lost wages for the retrieval day (which requires a full day off from work). For out out-of- town egg donors, expenses include travel, hotel, per diem cash (NAFG’s egg donation program offers $75 per day), lost wages, as well as travel, hotel and per diem expenses for a companion.  Although we appreciate the financial sacrifice that recipients make for fertility treatment, we discourage our clients from nickel and diming here: yes, your donor is getting paid for her efforts, but she is doing you a great service, and for that, she should be in a comfortable hotel, have money for food, and not be penalized for losing work. As an agency, we work hard to find reasonable rates for flights and hotels, but egg donor safety and comfort is our primary concern. An estimated expense budget is specified in the contract, so all agree on its amount and scope ahead of time.

According to our policy, the donor only receives her compensation if the retrieval takes place. If, for any reason, the egg donation cycle is not completed, the donor does not get paid. (Some agencies pay the fee in increments along various stages in the process, but we do not.) She cannot be held responsible for the recipients’ expenses for any of her travel or medical care (except in a hypothetical case of willful fraud on the donor’s part).