The Ethics of Egg Donation

University of Pittsburgh biologist Gerald Schatten cut his ties with Korean cloning expert Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul National University after nearly two years of collaboration, saying that Hwang had obtained human eggs unethically.

"With current techniques, it takes dozens of eggs to make a single cloned human embryo, which is destroyed in the process of extracting the stem cells. That means that if the field of therapeutic cloning is to advance -- a field involving the creation of cloned embryos as sources of stem cells that would be genetically matched to particular patients -- a significant number of eggs will be needed both to fuel the initial research and eventually to satisfy the demands of patients. It is legal in the United States to pay women for their eggs, and in recent years at least two teams of stem cell researchers in Massachusetts have done so to the tune of thousands of dollars per procedure. Scientists at Advanced Cell Technology of Worcester, Mass., made the decision to pay women only after a long analysis by an ethics board created by the company, said scientific director Robert Lanza. He still thinks it is the right way to go, Lanza said, given the painful injections involved, the uncomfortable egg suction procedure, and the approximately 5 percent chance of a serious case of hormonal over-stimulation, which can require hospitalization. Others, however, say such payments cannot help but be coercive, especially for poor women who might feel compelled to take on those risks just to make ends meet. In April, the National Academies, chartered by Congress to advise the nation on matters of science, released a report that recommended against payments for human eggs beyond expenses incurred by the donors, in part because of the "sensitivities" inherent in the creation of embryos destined for destruction." By Rick Weiss,Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, November 20, 2005; A06