Film Presents the Hidden Dangers, Health Risks, and Exploitation of Young Women Through Egg Donation

NEW YORK, NY/July 28, 2010 – The infertility industry has a dirty little secret that is dressed in deceptive advertising, large monetary incentives and appeals to altruism. Using these tactics, the industry targets young, vulnerable women for a precious commodity: human eggs. Eggsploitation, a new documentary released today by The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, is a tragic spotlight on the booming and risky business of selling eggs, and reveals the health risks and exploitation of women through egg donation. Eggsploitation debuts at The Little Theatre in Rochester, New York, on Monday, August 9, 2010 at 5:00 p.m.

Eggsploitation profiles three highly educated young women—Calla, Alexandra and Sindy—all who suffered extreme health consequences related to their egg donation. Dangerous health complications can occur during the egg donation process as a result of taking high doses of fertility drugs or the egg retrieval surgery, or both. Their disturbing testimonies about their experience with egg donation are a wake-up call to a highly unregulated, multi-billion-dollar industry that is jeopardizing young women’s health at the expense of fulfilling another’s desire to have a baby.

Calla suffered a stroke, brain damage and loss of her own fertility; Alexandra lost an ovary due to complications related to superovulation and later developed breast cancer; and Sindy developed severe ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS). All three women nearly died due to the complications associated with their egg donation. In an interview for the film, Calla recounts, “The industry knew that this would happen sooner or later. They’ve just been rolling the dice and it fell on me. It was worth the money to them.”

With the rise of assisted reproductive technology, young, healthy women are targeted on university campuses with advertisements in college newspapers and on the internet. Fertility clinics place advertisements in search of egg donors with desirable genetic traits, attractive appearance and a high IQ. These women are lured by the large sums of money and assured of the safety of the procedure and the nobility of helping others.

Egg donation is presented as a safe procedure, but the reality is quite the opposite. Eggsploitation blows the whistle on the disturbing realities of the infertility industry’s human egg trade. This film is a call to action to egg donors and the general public to confront the exploitative practices of egg donation and seek legislative action to protect women’s health.

For more information, visit www.eggsploitation.com.

About The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network: Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network (CBC) was founded with a vision to educate and engage the public on bioethical issues, including stem cell research, reproductive technology, human cloning and euthanasia. The CBC is actively involved in supporting many states in legislative advocacy and public policy on these issues. The CBC’s first documentary, Lines That Divide, was an official selection of the 2010 California Independent Film Festival.

I am in Sydney Airport waiting for the first leg of an 18 hour trip home. I thought I would reflect on the last two very busy and intense weeks, and what I hope was accomplished.

The last time I was asked to tour Australia, in August 2001, it was to blunt the moral outlawry of Phillip Nitschke. In what was probably my most successful advocacy effort ever, we hit him hard for advocating that suicide be made available to “troubled teens,” and exposed his import of a plastic suicide bag from Canada—an effort that started a process that resulted, after I left the country, in the government outlawing such dangerous suicide paraphernalia.

This time, the trouble comes from a different source. As in the USA and elsewhere, advocates of euthanasia have adopted a professional model, with very well tailored—usually female—elites pitching the poison to other elites. In other words, advocacy has substantially shifted from a bottom/up approach, (e.g., in the USA Hemlock Society), to a top/down model, e.g., (in USA) Hemlock morphing into Compassion and Choices. That presents different challenges and advocacy methods, a process I was brought here to help begin, and I think we made a good start. (Legalization activists claim that bringing law and transparency to the process will undermine the moral outlaws. The opposite is actually true. No matter what categories of mercy killing are legalized, the Nitschkes and Kevorkians will still operate outside the boundaries, pushing an ever widening killing license.)

As I posted earlier, the legalization proposals here are more radical than those in the USA. First, in South Australia and Western Australia, there is no pretense of assisted suicide. It is flat out euthanasia, meaning these proposals would turn doctors into killers, and moreover, that how-to-kill-your-patients classes would have to be taught in medical school and in continuing education. The proposals would also turn doctors into liars by requiring them to list a false cause of death on official documents, e.g., the underlying condition rather than the actual cause of a lethal jab.

As I pointed out in speech after speech, in the media, and to anyone who would listen, such a course isn’t just about the individual patient involved—but would change society itself. It would alter the way we look at the elderly, people with disabilities, the ill, and the despairing. Considering that Australia is also experiencing health care reform difficulties, if society ever came to see euthanasia as a cost containment measure—after all, what could be a cheaper “treatment” than killing?—or even as a new source of organs—as has begun to occur in Belgium—it would give the whole a stake in killing off its weaker and vulnerable members.

Finally, as I head back to the USA, I am filled with tremendous warmth and affection for Australia as a whole, and most particularly, for all the people I met, who spent time listening to me, speaking to me, and driving great distances to see me. Australia is a superb and beautiful country with energetic, dynamic, diverse, and friendly people. I look forward to coming again someday.

Still, there is no place like home. Once I’m over my reverse jet lag, I’ll post a few photos I took. Until the flying is done, over and out.

Louise Brown was born in the United Kingdom on July 25, 1978, the world’s first test-tube baby, conceived by in vitro fertilization (IVF).

Just five years later in Australia, fertility doctors used the first donor egg in an IVF procedure. Since then, IVF technologies have been accepted almost entirely without criticism as the treatment of choice for couples struggling with infertility. These technologies have become so mainstream that we now see IVF treatments being used by couples with otherwise healthy and functioning reproductive bodies.

Same-sex couples can now become parents using donated eggs, sperm, and surrogate wombs. To be a “single mom by choice” is gaining popularity as a lifestyle option for women who don’t want to wait for Mr. Right—or who just choose, as “Octumom” did, not to bother with Mr. Right.

Post-menopausal women, sometimes well into their 60s, who should be welcoming grandchildren into their families, are seeking reproductive technologies for more children of their own.

Recently, Illinois passed a new law requiring insurance providers with IVF coverage to extend benefits not just to infertile couples, but now to same-sex couples and single-by-choice folks (neither of whom can be said to be “infertile” in any common sense).

The baby-making industry is now a global market, making many rich as others are being exploited. Furthermore, reproductive technologies are becoming increasingly eugenic, seeking to design the “best” children money and technology can buy.

Egg Donation

Take a look at the egg donation market in the U.S. The most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that in 2007, in the United States alone, over 17,000 assisted reproductive technology cycles were performed using donated eggs. And this number is on the rise.

The majority of cycles were performed using anonymously donated eggs, meaning the young egg donor has no idea if her eggs produced children and who the parents are. Would-be parents scour the internet and egg broker agencies like “Our Fairy Godmother,” or “A Perfect Match,” looking for the best genetic material available to create a child of their dreams.

Certain desirable characteristics—being pretty or tall or having high SAT scores—can fetch more money for the donor. If the donor’s eggs produce healthy children, she has secured her position as the coveted proven egg donor who can donate again and again, often at even higher payments.

But the general public, let alone most potential egg donors, doesn’t really understand (1) what is involved in egg donation—that is, how doctors can manipulate a young woman’s body to produce multiple eggs at one time (Hint: It requires many weeks of injecting powerful hormones, followed by anesthesia and surgery to remove the eggs), and (2) how little we have studied the effects of the donation procedures on egg donors over time—we have little to no data on the short- and longer-term risks to egg donors who take the powerful drugs needed to produce many eggs.

For those who ascribe to the Christian view of marriage, family, and procreation, certainly we can agree that third-party means to build a family are quite problematic. And we should be deeply concerned about the potential harm done to young women.

Market Competition

But as the egg donation practice continues, now the competition is expanding. Human eggs are a coveted resource for embryonic stem cell and cloning researchers. On June 14, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine—responsible for spending CA Proposition 71’s $3 billion in taxpayer funds on human embryonic stem cell and cloning research—had a private session where the agenda was to discuss “Procurement of Human Oocytes [eggs].”

Two of my colleagues attended this meeting, but were barred from entering. They were told the meeting was private because of the need to protect intellectual property. One has to wonder what intellectual property needs to be protected when the discussion is around the purchasing of human eggs for research, which is prohibited in California.

Currently, the only state that can pay donors for their eggs for scientific research is New York, and that is now being challenged in the courts. Of course, California stem cell researchers are trying to change that law. They argue that since we can pay egg donors to sell their eggs to the IVF industry, they should also be able to compete for human eggs, since they assert their research will ultimately benefit sick people.

Caught in the Middle: The Eggsploited

Our new documentary film, Eggsploitation, seeks to spotlight the booming business of human eggs, told through the tragic and revealing stories of real women who became involved and whose lives have changed forever. You will meet women whose stories you won’t hear in the mainstream press, and aren’t talked about on Oprah or discussed at professional meetings among fertility specialists. Some are women who were students on prestigious college campuses in America, racking up student loan debt, who responded to ads posted in their school newspapers and on bulletin boards, and thought the answer to their mounting debt was to answer an ad to “help make someone’s dream come true.”

This film seeks to shed light on the experiences of these young women, telling the full story of this multi-billion dollar industry. As one young woman laments in a comment shared with her mother, after her near brush with death, “The industry knew that this would happen sooner or later. They’ve just been rolling the dice and it fell on your daughter. It was worth the money to them.”

This article originally appeared on BreakPoint.

Splice is a science fiction / horror film about genetic experimentation gone wrong. Clive and Elsa (Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley) are scientists working to combine strands of DNA from multiple animals to create a new organism that will generate proteins aimed at curing animal diseases. Achieving success in their animal experiments, Elsa is anxious to move on to working with human DNA. However, the pharmaceutical company for which they work is focused on generating quick profits on animal cures, and announces they are retooling the lab for protein research rather than DNA research.

Elsa convinces Clive to initiate a human DNA experiment, simply to see if they can get the genes to combine. Away from everyone else in the lab, they start the experiment, then move it to the next step, then to the next — each time promising one another they will stop the experiment before the step is complete — until a full-term creature is born (via an artificial womb).

Elsa quickly begins to treat the creature as a pet and then as a daughter, naming her Dren (nerd spelled backwards and perhaps a play on Eden). Clive, on the other hand, vacillates between wanting and trying to kill the creature and telling her that he loves her. As Dren quickly matures, she exhibits several childlike traits, including petulance, which is particularly dangerous given that she has a tail with a barbed stinger.

Elsa and Clive work increasingly hard to keep Dren a secret from the rest of the lab, while their earlier DNA experiment self-destructs and the protein research fails. The third act of the film takes a truly absurd (and sexually graphic) turn, and the denouement leaves open the possibility of a sequel (of course).

From a purely film-critical perspective, Splice is a mediocre offering at best. The foreshadowing is so heavy handed that it ruins any potential for genuine suspense. Everything that happens seems pretty obvious. In addition, there were several themes that were potentially interesting, but which were simply never developed. It is as if the writers threw in everything they thought of that might have a link to genetics. To cite but one example, there were indications that Elsa had an abusive childhood at the hand of her mother, which causes her anxiety about her potential as a mother. Did she inherit bad mothering? What kind of mother would she make? In the end, this theme is largely unexplored.

From a bioethics perspective, the trailer (below) mentions ethical concerns, so I hoped for a scene in which there would be some consideration of the ethics of what was going on. Unfortunately though, the full range of ethical exploration is contained in the trailer. Elsa’s utilitarian insistence that “millions of people are suffering and dying” and “if we don’t do it, someone else will” are all the warrant she needs. The counter argument is simply that regulation and public opinion are against it, and profits can be made from the animal experiments now. Are there not other arguments and perspectives worth bringing to bear?

While Elsa invokes a consequentialist view, she clearly has not given serious consideration to the potential consequences of her actions. Nor, for that matter, does Clive, in the choices he makes. In a scene late in the film, Elsa and Clive argue about right and wrong, but no basis for judging right and wrong are given, only “there are some things you just don’t do.” But why?

Perhaps I expect too much from a sci-fi/horror movie, even one that advertises itself with appeals to ethics. In the end, I simply cannot recommend Splice, even though it may prompt us to consider the basis on which we make moral judgments.

Splice is rated R for horror violence, language, and some sexuality

August 9 @ 5:00 PM
eggsploitation Screening
The Little Theatre
Rochester, NY

October 23
“An Inconvenient Truth: Eggsploitation Happens”
Jennifer Lahl
Critical Life Issues Conference
St. John Neumann Conference Center
Piscataway, NJ

Since organ donation became the recommended treatment of choice for many patients with end-stage organ failure, the controversy over the number of available organs for transplant and the solutions to addressing the shortage of much needed organs for those on waiting lists has been an on-going discussion. Proposed solutions typically include payment for organs, denial of organs to some patients, or changing consent practices.

For example, should we open up the free markets and let people buy and sell organs? Sally Satel, a physician and resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute and herself a recipient of a kidney transplant, said that she would have “gladly paid for a kidney,” if the laws had permitted it. Dr. Satel has recently edited a volume,When Altruism Isn’t Enough: The Case for Compensating Kidney Donors, where experts and scholars advocate for government incentives to those willing to “donate” a kidney.

Or, should we draw bright lines for those who are too sick and not allow them to be added to organ waiting lists? Wesley Smith, our CBC special consultant, writes this about the dangerous cocktail of futile care theory and organ donation:

Think about it: We already have bioethicists advocating for futile care theory, that is, the right to refuse wanted life-sustaining treatment based on quality of life judgmentalism, resource allocation, or both. Add in the motive for taking organs to this volatile field-and wary families will become even less trusting, and medical issues will become even more likely to end up in court. Square that if we ever enact explicit health care rationing, or redefine death to include a diagnosis of PVS-as many luminaries in the transplant field advocate.

And, what is back in the news again is the solution often referred to as Presumed Consent. Presumed consent states that we should presume that all people would want to be an organ donor, and we move to an opt-out system whereby individuals need to explicitly state that they do NOT want to be an organ donor versus stating that they do want to be a donor. CBC has written about all of these proposed “solutions” over the years, and we will continue to do so as these issues surface where changes in policy and practice are proposed.

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, (D-New York), is hoping to make his state the first in the country to adopt presumed consent as their policy. Brodsky’s interest in this law is personal too, as his daughter has been the recipient of two kidney transplants. I often lament that laws get written and passed when the lawmaker has a personal and vested interest. How many lawmakers are running their re-election campaigns on their successful passage of strict, assisted-reproductive technology regulation? But I digress . . .

Brodsky believes, as do proponents of presumed consent laws, that these types of policies will lead to a positive and dramatic increase in the number of available organs for those in need of them. Well, the verdict is still out on whether or not presumed consent policies solve the organ shortage. Yes, it is true that if we just assume people want to donate their organs, we will have greater access to more of them. However, as people live longer and not necessarily healthier lives, and since transplantation is the treatment of choice for those in end-stage organ failure, it is still not certain that the shortage will disappear.

But what is really at the heart of the matter is the doing away with the altruistic notion that organ donation is just that. It is a gift, freely given (not sold) and never coerced or presumed. It is the arrogant, presumptuous taking of organs which, I submit, is smack dab in the middle of the shortage; people are afraid that they will be rushed to death or denied care in order to get to their organs. I personally am a huge supporter of organ donation. And I have made my wishes known to my proxy who is named in my durable power of attorney for healthcare decisions, should I not be able to consent for myself. Ethical solutions are needed, not the presumptuous taking of organs.

The media was all atwitter a few weeks ago when scientists announced that they had created synthetic life. Technically, that isn’t true—if by synthetic life one means creating life out of non life. Rather, scientists took a living bacterium, removed its genetic content, and replaced it with a manufactured genome of a different species. The new genome took control of the existing cell and created a new species that acted like its natural counterparts, including cell splitting. Thus, it might be more accurate to say that scientists have successfully mimicked life rather than literally created it.

Semantics aside, it was an astounding scientific achievement that could lead, the scientists said, to man exerting “a new power over life.” They weren’t kidding. The potential safety and ethical consequences of learning to engineer new life forms—including eventually of the human variety—is hard to overstate.

That being so, we had better get about the task of erecting legally enforceable safety and ethical parameters around this field while we still have time to act deliberately. And here’s an important truth: If society doesn’t decide where we want the science to go—and not go—the amoral inertial imperative of technological advance will fill the resulting vacuum with potentially terrible consequences.

We have already seen the moral and social anarchy that flows from refusing to rationally regulate the awesome power of emerging life sciences. When in vitro fertilization (IVF) became a possible means of treating infertility, critics worried about ethical and practical consequences that could result when we took reproduction literally into our own hands. But IVF boosters scoffed at these concerns, assuring us that scientists could be trusted to exercise prudence and self control without the need to resort to government regulation. Thus in her 1980 syndicated column “Making Babies,” syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman wrote:

A fear of many protesting the opening of this [IVF] clinic is that doctors there will fertilize myriad eggs and discard the “extras” and the abnormal, as if they were no more meaningful than a dish of caviar. But this fear seems largely unwarranted.

We now know that Goodman was wholly mistaken, that we do indeed “discard” the “extras,” and do view these embryos as “no more meaningful than a dish of caviar.” Worse, because we now have more than 400,000 embryos in hyper-frozen stasis, many view these nascent human beings not as potential babies, but instead, as a bounteous natural resource ripe for exploitation and destruction in medical treatments and various biological experiments, a matter that would have caused horror when Goodman wrote, but which she and much of the science sector now find perfectly acceptable.

Indeed by failing to regulate IVF, it has, in effect, regulated us, leading directly to tremendous changes in the norms of family life (e.g., Octomom and aged motherhood), the reemergence of eugenics values (for example, in embryo selection), and an overall utilitarian objectification of unborn life (human cloning, embryonic stem cell research, and advocacy to permit fetal farming). If that was true of IVF—which, recall, had the original limited goal of helping infertile married couples have babies—imagine the potential epochal impact broadly synthesizing life could exert over the earth’s biology and human morality.

The good news is that unlike IVF, concerns over the impact of synthetic life could become a rare field about which the political left and right, so often at loggerheads, could agree. Thus, we should applaud President Obama for directing his new bioethics advisory panel (Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues) to investigate the implications of this field and report back to him with proposed societal responses. I also urge the proposed conservative “shadow bioethics panel” now being formed —which seems designed to continue the splendid moral analytical engagement of the now defunct President’s Council on Bioethics—to engage the issue and publish recommendations for proper regulatory action.

This is not to say that the science should be wholly stifled. But it is to say that we should refuse to assume the posture of mere flotsam and jetsam floating on the currents. For once, as a powerful new science emerges, let’s control our own destiny. The last thing the world needs is a synthetic life science sector Wild, Wild, West.

CBC special consultant Wesley J. Smith is a Senior Fellow in Human Rights and Bioethics with the Discovery Institute. His most recent book is A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement.

2010 marks the tenth anniversary of the CBC! We are preparing for some special projects and events throughout the year to commemorate this exciting milestone, and we need your help now more than ever.

We all know how powerful film media can be; and the CBCís productions are no exception. Last month, Lines That Divide: The Great Stem Cell Debate was an official selection of the California Independent Film Festival, and it continues to be be shown all over the world — on television, in theaters, on college campuses, in churches — educating the public on the ethical issues surrounding stem cell research. And as we move forward with the production and release of Eggsploitation, we will educate young women, assist legislators who seek to pass laws to protect young women, and push back against the scientific human cloning agenda which depends so heavily on human eggs. If you are interested in purchasing an advance copy of this film, visit www.eggsploitation.com. Let us know if you want to organize a showing in your community!

The last ten years have provided a deep ethical foundation to build upon in the future. Please visit our website and read our report on our past ten years of accomplishments and great progress toward securing a human future. The CBC is commited to our important role in shoring up the ethics of scientific and medical progress.

You are an essential part of the CBCís work — your financial support enables us to pave new paths in the field of bioethics and prepare for sound ethical engagement in the next ten years of biotechnological advance. Together, we can stand in the gap between the promise of great scientific discovery and the potential destruction and disregard of human life. Your gift today will contribute to the work at hand, and, ultimately, to the future of human dignity and the sanctity of life.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Lahl
National Director

Support us financially, or even better, become a monthly supporter. For any donation of $100 or more we will send you a copy of the documentary, Lines That Divide. Get the word out about the CBC! We have a lot of work to do and you can help.

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