Posts Tagged ‘paid egg donation’

Is egg donation genetic engineering?

Saturday, April 26th, 2008

Infertile couples looking for a perfect egg donors offering huge amounts of money — $50,000 to $100,000 — are not unusual to find these days.


If you open a student magazine or newspaper from an Ivy League university, and have a look at the classifieds section you can find advertisements like these quite easily.

The donor must meet all the perfect requirements. The egg donor should be a student off an Ivy League university or be a previous student of the Ivy League university.

The woman who donates her eggs should optimally have given birth in the past. Or she should have donated eggs in the past that resulted in a successful and healthy birth. Because egg donor agencies and infertile couples are looking for a woman that has a proven track record off fertile eggs.

They egg donor is required to be off certain stature including height and weight and body mass index.

Hair and eye color should match the infertile couples hair and eye color.


Racial properties also are off major importance. For example, an Asian couple would want an Asian egg donor. A Chinese infertile couple would want a Chinese egg donor, and Indian infertile couple would want and Indian egg donor, a Japanese infertile couple would want a Japanese chose five. I think you get the gist of it.

While some of these requirements are totally valid critics like to point out that this might be the beginning of genetic engineering. Because selecting genetic properties off and egg donor is actually manipulating the genetic pool that the children of a parent will pass on to their child. People are concerned about genetic engineering want to make sure that a scenario which Aldous Huxley draw in Brave New World won’t came in reality where rich people can afford to have superior genetic genes and poor people have to accept a poor or riskier genetic pool.

However from our perspective this is not a valid argument. Rich people can go for better health care, healthier food, and better living conditions which all are beneficial for healthy children. The impact paid egg donation has is just a part of the big picture.