Andrea Gurmanankin was concerned about the quality of information that was being provided to prospective egg donors about the risks involved with the process.
And so the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences student decided to take matters into her own hands.
Gurmankin put together a careful investigation of the risks involved with in-vitro fertilization and a subsequent paper detailing the results of her research. For her outstanding work, Gurmankin was awarded the prestigious 2001 Association for Politics and Life Sciences Graduate Student Paper Award.
The paper, "Risk Information Provided to Prospective Oocyte Donors", was published in the American Journal of Bioethics last November after Gurmankin's intensive investigation of the information available to prospective donors about the procedure's risks.
Her award signifies the quality and importance of her written work on a topic that relates to public policy and one of the life sciences.
"I was very honored and pleased," Gurmankin said. "It was really a pleasure."
As a student, Gurmankin was concerned about the combined elements of egg donation programs that offered women thousands of dollars for donating their eggs and the program's incentive to minimize the possible risks to these women. She was concerned enough to initiate the study, and began the process of her research by collecting ads run in the newspapers of the two largest colleges in each state and all the Ivies.
Gurmankin focused her research on an initial phone call to the egg donor programs. Gurmankin spent time calling individual programs and asking to learn more about the egg donation process. She found that the programs volunteered very little information about the risks of egg donation, even when she asked specific risk-related questions.
"Though this was a small sample of programs and focuses, I think that this is an issue that is problematic and definitely needs attention," said Gurmankin, who is a graduate student in both the Masters of Bioethics program and the doctoral program in Psychology at Penn. "[The study] has demonstrated the need for more regulation for this process."
Gurmankin continues to collaborate with her colleagues at the Center for Bioethics. She first interned at the center in the summer of 1996.
After her summer experience, Gurmankin stayed at Penn for the fall semester, taking Biomedical Ethics, a class taught by Glenn McGee, associate director of education at the Center for Bioethics and also editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Bioethics.
Gurmankin learned about the issues involving in-vitro fertilization programs and decided that it was too important to leave to idle speculation.
"Andy's study is path-breaking research -- controversial because it involves deception, but important because it is the first look at what really happens when vulnerable women become part of the egg recruitment world," said McGee in a press release.
Gurmankin continues to work on researching the area of reproductive technology, but has not yet begun to work towards the next logical step in her investigation of the in-vitro fertilization programs: the development and implementation of policy changes that demand closer scrutiny of the treatment of egg donors.
"I think it's striking some more discussion about the issue, which is very very important, and could lead to some action that I would love to be a part of," she said.
