Lisa Zhu | Maybe not an egg-cellent idea

"Student loans got you down? Need to make some quick money to pay for that spring break trip? Have no fear, Egg Donations 'R Us is here! Earn up to $15,000 for your time, all expenses paid! (SAT scores of 1400-plus preferred, men need not apply.)" OK, so this isn't a real egg-donation ad from The Daily Pennsylvanian. But flip a few pages back to the Classifieds section, and you'll no doubt see a couple of real requests for egg donors, almost all of which promise some form of lucrative compensation.

While no amount of money could convince me personally to part with my genetic material, I do see why someone might choose to donate her eggs. Providing the gift of life to fertility-challenged parents sounds rewarding, and I doubt that the thousands of dollars given as reimbursement for the donor's time hurts either.

However, the practice of certain agencies in the industry to lure female college students - especially those at Ivy League institutions - to donate their eggs with promise of greater riches is patently unethical and needs serious reevaluation.

To be sure, the benefits of recruiting for donors on university campuses are obvious. According to an FAQ sheet given to potential donors by the agency Fertility Alternatives, Inc., "The ideal Egg Donor is attractive and reasonably intelligent." But while student donors are certainly likely to fit the intelligence and age criteria, they also tend not to fully understand the impact of egg donation.

"For most young women, the ability to imagine the long-term emotional and psychological consequences of what they do at age 22 may be incomplete," said History and Sociology of Science professor Susan Lindee. Worse yet, full-time college students also have fewer opportunities for income generation, making them financially vulnerable targets for donor-broker agencies.

"One of the concerns about egg donors and human subjects in general is undue inducement. That's a concept which essentially means that you can't offer someone so much money that they can't choose freely," said Lindee. "For a college student facing a lot of credit-card debt, $10,000 might be an example of undue inducement." Indeed, approximately 4,000 Penn undergraduates currently receive some form of financial aid - compensation on such a scale could certainly give some of them pause for thought.

In fact, for students at Penn and other elite universities, the advertised payment packages may be even larger than standard industry rates in some cases. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine's guidelines stipulate a maximum donor reimbursement of $10,000, but ads in select college newspapers across the country can often offer sums several times higher.

For instance, one College and Wharton junior who wishes to remain unnamed has admitted to considering donating her eggs, "It sounds like good money. I've got baller SATs and I hear that's one of the things that helps you get more money."

To be fair, however, many donor broker agencies do adhere to the ASRM best practices. "Are there clients who call my office and say, 'We're only looking for a Harvard donor, and we're willing to pay $75,000'? Yes, but we don't work with donors who present themselves in that way," said Amy Demma, president of the donor-broker agency Prospective Families. "I don't particularly care for parents who are motivated to pay more money for a 'superior' donor because she has a specific education or background."

But since a few bad apples can spoil the proverbial barrel, it's not enough for the ASRM to simply stamp its seal of approval on ethical agencies. Instead, the entire egg-donation industry needs to be better regulated in order to reduce the predatory recruitment of college donors, including the overhyped ads that you might find in the back of this DP. After all, if we acknowledge the problem posed by credit-card companies' attempts to prey on students' finances, we shouldn't continue to condone the efforts by some donor-broker agencies to acquire their eggs, either.

Lisa Zhu is a College and Wharton senior from Cherry Hill, NJ. Zhu-ology appears on Thursdays. Her email address is zhu@dailypennsylvanian.com.

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