Ethics of egg donation

Wanted: Tall, smart, pretty women - not as models or actresses but as egg donors. The question of embryo destruction is not the only ethical question human cloning poses. There's also the question of exploiting young women to get the eggs cloners need for research.

Cloners have faced an egg shortage since some states prohibit researchers from paying women for their eggs. Fertility clinics and "egg brokers," however, may pay women tens of thousands of dollars for their eggs. A California biotechnology company, reportedly the first to clone an adult human being, skirted egg restrictions by soliciting egg donations from fertility clinics.

Dorinda Bordlee, executive director for the Bioethics Defense Fund, told WoW that egg brokers usually target college students burdened by student debt and living costs. Bordlee said it is unethical to offer cash-strapped women large amounts of money to undergo an invasive medical process with unknown side effects.

Jennifer Lahl, national director for Center for Bioethics and Culture, said to retrieve the eggs, doctors first inject drugs that make the body "mimic menopause" so that the donor's menstrual cycle matches the cycle of the woman receiving the egg. Then doctors inject the donor with powerful hormones that hyper-stimulate her ovaries so she produces more eggs. They then surgically remove the eggs, grade them, fertilize and implant them.

"Every step along the way, that egg donor - and I hate using the word donor - is in harm's way," Lahl told WoW. The drugs are powerful and the FDA has not approved them for that particular use. There is no donor database or medical follow-up as there is for organ donors. There are reports of stroke, infertility and in rare cases, death.

As human cloning advances, the demand for eggs will increase. Lahl predicts that cloners and stem cell researchers will reason that their research is a worthy cause: "If we can pay a young girl to make babies, why can't we pay a young girl to help Michael J. Fox?"