Asian Egg Donors

Is there a flaw in the US egg donation system?

The Chicago Tribute pointed out that documentation at egg donor agencies is often suboptimal. Many European egg donor agencies have to report to an egg donation registry that makes sure that all data is stored savely, but in the US this is not happening currently. But there are cases where medical reasons make this necessary, at least morally advisable.

There was the case of the mother of a daughter that died from cancer. The daughter donated her eggs in the past, and the mother now wanted to inform the parents that her daughter donated her eggs for. But the egg donor agency did not store the records and thus there is no way of tracing this family.

Some donor agencies also won’t disclose the information, because of privacy issues.

Three large fertility clinics in the US have committed themselves to a registry comparable to these in Europen states and Australia – but on a voluntary basis. Because privacy is a major selling point of egg donor agencies, and many donors and recieving couples want a 100% guarantee of privacy.

At least 8,000 babies are born each year in the U.S. from donated eggs or embryos, according to reports from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Another reason for a registry is that women should not donate their eggs more than 6 times – but since there is no registry of donors, there is no way of ensuring this, other than trusting the donors to be honest about disclosing previous egg donations.

A way of balancing between privacy and responsability would a registry that kept the donors identity private while disclosing as much medical information as necessary.

But there are other factors that come into play to that are more nitty-gritty. For example who will be responsible of alerting families about medical conditions the donors had years after they donated eggs. And how should the egg donor agency keep track of these? This would definitely cost substantial amounts of money, require some legal paperwork and then the risk of legal liability for egg donors or egg donor agencies might arise.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-donor-registry_27mar27,0,1537338.story

This is a really interesting question, and one that is crucial for couples to become clear about.

Patricia Wen wrote a great article about parents who recieved an egg donation that points out that only only about half of these parents decide to tell their child about their “genetic origins”. In the particular study that is mentioned in the article, it’s 56% you opt to tell their kids, vs 44% who decided to keep it a secret.

Experience shows that kids can feel betrayed if they later in life find out that there was another woman involved in their coming into being. Whereas if communication is open from the very beginning (of course always appropriate to the age of the child) a child can be completely cool about it.

There’s also another side factoring in: just medically it could be relevant in certain cases to know about the genetic characteristics of the mother of the egg.

I highly encourage you to read this excellent article in the Boston Globe called “To Tell The Truth”.