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Speaker 1: From housetop works dot com aither and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: This is Molly and I'm Kristen and Kristen. A little
Speaker 1: disclosure to our listeners who were gonna into a whole
Speaker 1: different topic today. We were, But in the past few
Speaker 1: weeks we have seen a ton of stories about how
Speaker 1: in this down economy, uh, there's a trend of young
Speaker 1: women trying to donate their eggs to make money. Right,
Speaker 1: Because if you've ever looked through a newspaper, sometimes we'll
Speaker 1: be ads in classified sections for um for women's eggs,
Speaker 1: and they run anywhere from five thousand, ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: So women see this and think, hey, that's a easy
Speaker 1: way to earn a book, yeah, some credit card bill.
Speaker 1: So it's it's a pretty big trend. I think we're
Speaker 1: reading articles that said, had every fertility clinic across the board,
Speaker 1: across the country is showing spikes in women trying to
Speaker 1: donate their eggs, right, And these are stories ranging from
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal, CNN, Slate. I mean it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of running the gamut of news outlets. But Molly, I
Speaker 1: have to wonder, um, donating your eggs, that seems like
Speaker 1: a complicated process that it doesn't seem like you know,
Speaker 1: sperm bank you can walk in, walk out sixty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although we gotta say, you know, sperm banks are a
Speaker 1: little little more complicated than that. But still eggs. I
Speaker 1: mean you have to you have to get them from
Speaker 1: inside your body and extract them. I know, reading up
Speaker 1: on the process, it almost sounds like it would be
Speaker 1: a part time job. Yeah. I mean, the pay would
Speaker 1: be equivalent to a part time job, but so is
Speaker 1: the process. So I think, Kristen, why don't we go
Speaker 1: over that process? Okay, first, before you can even just
Speaker 1: get your money, you've got to be approved. And there's
Speaker 1: pretty strict criteria for this. Yeah, you've got to be
Speaker 1: at least one years old and uh in your early
Speaker 1: thirties at the most. By the time your thirty five,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get probably cut from any list. Um, they'd
Speaker 1: like you to have advanced education, high SAT scores will help.
Speaker 1: You need to be the healthy weight of course, no drugs,
Speaker 1: no smoking. Some agencies won't allow you to donate if
Speaker 1: you've had a tattoo recently or anybody piercings. Need to
Speaker 1: have good family medical history. I mean, you kind of
Speaker 1: need to be be in a really good shape the
Speaker 1: ideal woman. And it's more than just your body and
Speaker 1: your brain. You've got to have very stable psychological levels.
Speaker 1: They've got to be able to tell that you know,
Speaker 1: you're not doing this for I don't know, for lack
Speaker 1: of a better word, some weird reason like ten dollars. Actually,
Speaker 1: it seems like women can be pretty upfront about wanting
Speaker 1: the money. I mean, that's not the best reason to
Speaker 1: go in and give them, but I think there are
Speaker 1: women who go in straight up. They're like, give me
Speaker 1: some money, show me the money, right right. There was
Speaker 1: a survey done um among I think it was eighty
Speaker 1: egg donors that was published in the December two thousand
Speaker 1: eight issue of the Journal Fertility and Sterility, and um
Speaker 1: I think it was. The women said that they did
Speaker 1: it just purely for altruistic reasons. They don't, you know,
Speaker 1: give me the money if you will, but but I
Speaker 1: just want to do good. Yeah, well that's what Every
Speaker 1: study that I read seems to show us that primarily
Speaker 1: women do this first some altruistic I want to help
Speaker 1: another family have a baby sort of reason. But we
Speaker 1: can't separate the fact that there's money attached, right, Molly.
Speaker 1: The money aspect of egg donation, which we'll get to later,
Speaker 1: is uh one of the controversial aspects of the whole process.
Speaker 1: But it's not like walking into a fertility clinic, is
Speaker 1: you know, like going to an a t M. Because
Speaker 1: about nine of the women who sign up to be
Speaker 1: egg donors are going to be cut before a single
Speaker 1: egg is harvested. Okay, So all these men who want
Speaker 1: to get the money, they may not get to it.
Speaker 1: They might go through that initial testing you know, normal
Speaker 1: b M, I know, smoking, et cetera. It they probably
Speaker 1: won't make it to that final round. It's like a
Speaker 1: reality sharing kind of is okay. So the ones who
Speaker 1: make it through, um, they are in for a world
Speaker 1: of paperwork. First. Yes, there's a lot of legal ramifications
Speaker 1: you've got to establish before you can give away your eggs,
Speaker 1: including the establishment of parental rights. There's going to be
Speaker 1: a contract that basically lays out the confidentiality clauses. Um.
Speaker 1: You know the fact that you're giving away all your
Speaker 1: rights to the eggs embryos. If you're the donor, they're
Speaker 1: gonna belong to this family that you're going to be
Speaker 1: matched with. Uh, they're gonna their names are gonna be
Speaker 1: on the birth certificate, and you probably are never going
Speaker 1: to see them again. Right. Essentially, you know, you can't
Speaker 1: if the person has a child from your egg, you
Speaker 1: can't go down the road claim that that child is
Speaker 1: is legally yours. And that same contract that you're talking about, Molly,
Speaker 1: should also lay out, um, the recipient's financial responsibility. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a costly process and a lot of times
Speaker 1: it's the recipients, not the donors who are gonna be
Speaker 1: paying for this series of meta who exams and medication
Speaker 1: and all of that that um that's involved. Now, this
Speaker 1: is where it starts to get really time consuming and
Speaker 1: kind of ikey for me, Kristen, But I'm just scared
Speaker 1: of shots, so that just might be me. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty it's pretty intensive. Um. Once once a donor and
Speaker 1: recipient are matched up, the main thing that they have
Speaker 1: to do in order for this to work is sync
Speaker 1: up their periods. Yeah, get on the same menstrual cycle.
Speaker 1: So what does that mean, Molly, what's our favorite word hormones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you have just kind of they've got to tinker
Speaker 1: with their hormone levels to not only sync up their
Speaker 1: menstrual cycle with the recipient, but also get prep their
Speaker 1: egg follicles to release multiple eggs instead of the usual
Speaker 1: one egg per month. Right. So the first thing you're
Speaker 1: gonna do is inject yourself daily um with gonano trope
Speaker 1: in agonists, which are the things that actually shut down
Speaker 1: your natural hormones. And this takes about four weeks. Four
Speaker 1: weeks of injections, and you're also on birth control all
Speaker 1: this time, so that this is kind of bringing your
Speaker 1: cycle to this natural end, getting you ready to sync
Speaker 1: up with this person who will eventually hopefully carry these eggs. Right.
Speaker 1: And the next stage is the ovarian stimulation process, And
Speaker 1: this is when the donor is injecting herself with with
Speaker 1: hormones to stimulate that release of the multiple eggs, right,
Speaker 1: because normally just do one a month. Right. And so
Speaker 1: during this process um, the donor undergoes frequent blood tests
Speaker 1: and ultrasounds so that the doctor can monitor the egg
Speaker 1: follicle development. And when those follicles are fully developed, the
Speaker 1: donor then injects herself again with human choreonic gonadotropin or
Speaker 1: hCG helping her eggs separate from the follical walls or retrieval.
Speaker 1: So you're basically prepping your ovaries to kind of do
Speaker 1: more work than they usually do and then release the
Speaker 1: eggs supercharged ovaries. Yeah, lots of shots, lots of pills,
Speaker 1: lots of ultrasounds. But the key thing here, you know,
Speaker 1: it's all these daily injections, but at the very end,
Speaker 1: timing could not be more crucial, Like you can mess
Speaker 1: up this whole process if you don't time all these
Speaker 1: injections and let your doctor know about when you're doing
Speaker 1: what exactly right, because once you do this last hCG injection,
Speaker 1: this is when it's time to retrieve the X. And
Speaker 1: you can't minimize the fact that this is surgery, like
Speaker 1: you're gonna be under anesthesia, general anesthesia, we should say,
Speaker 1: But they are going to stick a needle through your
Speaker 1: vagina tier ovaries, Yes they are. I mean, you can't
Speaker 1: minimize the fact that there's needles where I don't think
Speaker 1: there should be needles. Oh molly, despite what was despite
Speaker 1: what your you know, your comfort level, maybe with needles
Speaker 1: um and the donation process, which is which is the
Speaker 1: actual process of egg retrieval is very safe. It's just
Speaker 1: an ultrasound guided needle that, like you said, injects through
Speaker 1: the vaginal wall, retrieves the eggs, and then we have
Speaker 1: what thirty four to thirty six hours after that injection
Speaker 1: to get that done right, and then very quickly after that,
Speaker 1: they're going to be combining the harvested eggs with sperm um.
Speaker 1: You may use a sperm donor you may use the
Speaker 1: recipient male family members, sperm, husband, partner, and then um,
Speaker 1: they're gonna incubate that and then place that in the
Speaker 1: recipients uterus and that's IBF in vitro fertilization. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: simple enough, I guess. So it's kind of very painful
Speaker 1: for some women. I've read the actual surgery to remove
Speaker 1: the X right and there. No, this is not a
Speaker 1: risk free process. Um, all of these hormones that you're injecting,
Speaker 1: this process that that your body is having to undergo,
Speaker 1: which can you know, you can really strain your ovaries
Speaker 1: and actually cause something called ovarian hypersimulation syndrome. That's in
Speaker 1: a pretty small percentage of people, but it's a risk. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: and along with that you may experience hot flashes, mood swings,
Speaker 1: and breasts tenderness. Yeah. And I have to say, when
Speaker 1: I was reading the article that talks about this o
Speaker 1: h s S o varian hyper stimulation syndrome, that's scared
Speaker 1: me to death. And our article on the site says
Speaker 1: one percent chance of developing it. Looking at a site
Speaker 1: done by the National Institute of Health, and they said
Speaker 1: it's more like ten. And you know what happens if
Speaker 1: you have serious signs of this, tell me you gain
Speaker 1: weight at a rate of two pounds a day. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty intense stuff. I mean, I don't I know,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not trying to go either way on this.
Speaker 1: I know it's a very sensitive issue, but it's there
Speaker 1: are very real risk and that's I think the reason
Speaker 1: that people are very worried that these young women might
Speaker 1: be doing this strictly for money, because it is uh
Speaker 1: can be a major strain on your body. And um,
Speaker 1: like we said earlier, most women are compensated between you know,
Speaker 1: five seven thousand dollars, and the American Society of Reproductive
Speaker 1: Medicine recommends compensating no more than five thousand dollars because,
Speaker 1: like you said, they think that beyond that, women might
Speaker 1: just want to donate for the money and not take
Speaker 1: into account any you know, physical risks involved, right, especially
Speaker 1: because since this is a fairly new procedure, there are
Speaker 1: really no long term studies of how this might affect
Speaker 1: future fertility. UM. Being on this many fertility drugs for
Speaker 1: such an intense period of time, it could be linked
Speaker 1: with some cancers. They're still trying to investigate that um,
Speaker 1: but you're right, anything over five thousand dollars, The American
Speaker 1: Society of Reproductive Medicine says it could be the coercion. Basically,
Speaker 1: you're basically getting a young woman to give you eggs
Speaker 1: under financial gain. Right. And it's when I was reading
Speaker 1: these different articles online, the thing that struck me the
Speaker 1: most wasn't necessarily what was in the articles, but the
Speaker 1: comments attached to them. People most of the people were
Speaker 1: just outraged that women were being paid ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: for their to harvest their eggs, and they just thought
Speaker 1: it was morally and ethically just disgusting. Right is they
Speaker 1: find it morally ethical ethically disgusting because of the money
Speaker 1: attached to or the process in general, it seemed like
Speaker 1: it was more of the money factor. But my I
Speaker 1: went back and did a little research. Um, and the
Speaker 1: first test tube baby was born in London in night
Speaker 1: and there were similar reactions to that. People were horrified
Speaker 1: that you know, you could you know, quote unquote create
Speaker 1: life if you will um in a tube. And so
Speaker 1: it's set off this firestorm of ethical debates about you know,
Speaker 1: what are the limits of reproductive technology? Where is this going?
Speaker 1: And I think that this is just part of it. Well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting you bring up London, Kristen, because I know
Speaker 1: that in Britain and in Canada, among just a few
Speaker 1: of the countries, you don't get any compensation for donating
Speaker 1: your eggs. It's an entirely voluntary process. Yeah, and in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, the state of Maryland introduced the bill
Speaker 1: to ban compensation for egg donation. But I will say,
Speaker 1: you know, sperm donors at least get something. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: like sixty bucks. So are we saying that the mail
Speaker 1: the mail part is more valuable than the female part
Speaker 1: of the whole equation. Well, maybe sperm donation is not
Speaker 1: as controversial because, first of all, Um, the first sperm
Speaker 1: bank was founded in nineteen fifty three, so it's been
Speaker 1: around a lot longer. And as those those people know,
Speaker 1: you do not have to go inside of the mail
Speaker 1: to retrieve something. You don't have to He doesn't have
Speaker 1: to undergo any special medication. Really, when a guy goes
Speaker 1: to a sperm bank and he's approved, all that he
Speaker 1: has to refrain from is um ejaculating for a few
Speaker 1: days and that's about it. Nothing like six to eight
Speaker 1: weeks of Pokemon product. Yeah, no, no shots, none of that.
Speaker 1: But you know what's interesting to me is, even though
Speaker 1: this seems like something that is just a little too
Speaker 1: up close and personal for me and my eggs. Uh,
Speaker 1: women who do it, According to the American Society of
Speaker 1: Reproductive Medicine, a d of them in a survey that
Speaker 1: was done by that group reported they would donate again.
Speaker 1: They liked the process, they would do it again. And
Speaker 1: those said if they had to do it again, they
Speaker 1: would forego compensation. Right. Well, you know, if you're thinking
Speaker 1: about donating eggs, I think the most important thing is
Speaker 1: to know what's involved. You see five thousand, ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in a newspaper ad. There's a lot that goes
Speaker 1: into earning that money. It is not just to walk
Speaker 1: in walk out process. So if you'd like to learn
Speaker 1: more about the egg donation process and everything that goes
Speaker 1: into it, you can read how egg donation works on
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. And if you'd like to
Speaker 1: send me or Molly a question, comment or suggestion, you
Speaker 1: can email us at mom stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com for moralness and thousands of other topics doesn't.
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