New Documentary Eggsploitation Reveals the Infertility Industry’s Dirty Little Secret

For Immediate Release

Film Presents the Hidden Dangers, Health Risks, and Exploitation of Young Women Through Egg Donation

NEW YORK, NY/July 28, 2010 – The infertility industry has a dirty little secret that is dressed in deceptive advertising, large monetary incentives and appeals to altruism. Using these tactics, the industry targets young, vulnerable women for a precious commodity: human eggs. Eggsploitation, a new documentary released today by The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, is a tragic spotlight on the booming and risky business of selling eggs, and reveals the health risks and exploitation of women through egg donation. Eggsploitation debuts at The Little Theatre in Rochester, New York, on Monday, August 9, 2010 at 5:00 p.m.

Eggsploitation profiles three highly educated young women—Calla, Alexandra and Sindy—all who suffered extreme health consequences related to their egg donation. Dangerous health complications can occur during the egg donation process as a result of taking high doses of fertility drugs or the egg retrieval surgery, or both. Their disturbing testimonies about their experience with egg donation are a wake-up call to a highly unregulated, multi-billion-dollar industry that is jeopardizing young women’s health at the expense of fulfilling another’s desire to have a baby.

Calla suffered a stroke, brain damage and loss of her own fertility; Alexandra lost an ovary due to complications related to superovulation and later developed breast cancer; and Sindy developed severe ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS). All three women nearly died due to the complications associated with their egg donation. In an interview for the film, Calla recounts, “The industry knew that this would happen sooner or later. They’ve just been rolling the dice and it fell on me. It was worth the money to them.”

With the rise of assisted reproductive technology, young, healthy women are targeted on university campuses with advertisements in college newspapers and on the internet. Fertility clinics place advertisements in search of egg donors with desirable genetic traits, attractive appearance and a high IQ. These women are lured by the large sums of money and assured of the safety of the procedure and the nobility of helping others.

Egg donation is presented as a safe procedure, but the reality is quite the opposite. Eggsploitation blows the whistle on the disturbing realities of the infertility industry’s human egg trade. This film is a call to action to egg donors and the general public to confront the exploitative practices of egg donation and seek legislative action to protect women’s health.

For more information, visit www.eggsploitation.com.

About The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network: Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network (CBC) was founded with a vision to educate and engage the public on bioethical issues, including stem cell research, reproductive technology, human cloning and euthanasia. The CBC is actively involved in supporting many states in legislative advocacy and public policy on these issues. The CBC’s first documentary, Lines That Divide, was an official selection of the 2010 California Independent Film Festival.

Media Contacts

Christina Grenier Media Contact for CBC +1 (415) 948-5781 media@eggsploitation.com

Jennifer Lahl Founder and National Director, CBC +1 (925) 828-9123 jennifer.lahl@cbc-network.org

Reducing OHSS

By Jennifer Lahl, CBC National Director

I don't have access to this article but I do find this curious given how much we wish to ignore the health risks posed to young otherwise healthy women who we want to "donate" their eggs. OHSS is a very real and risky syndrome associated with egg donation procedures and well acknowledged and established in the medical literature. To counter the risks of OHSS this new study indicates that prophylactic use of dopamine agonists might well mitigate this response. If anyone has access to the journal, Human Reproduction Update, I would like to read this study mentioned below:

"Meta-analysis Reiterates Efficacy of Dopamine Agonists in Reducing OHSS IncidencePosted on 18 June 2010.The signs and symptoms of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS) is attributed to elevated vascular permeability, resulting in fluid shift from capillaries to the third space. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is linked to this increase in vascular permeability, and hence its suppression may potentially prevent or reduce the severity of OHSS. Dopamine agonists, which block VEGF receptor 2 phosphorylation, have been suggested to decrease the incidence and severity of OHSS in IVF/ICSI cycles. A new systematic review and meta-analysis highlights the prophylactic action of dopamine agonists, such as cabergoline, in lowering the incidence of OHSS. The study findings have been published in the journal, Human Reproduction Update."

How's this for a plan to reduce OHSS. Stop super-ovulating women since OHSS is a totally preventable syndrome.

Woman X: My Story as an Egg Donor

Another chilling story of a real life egg donor. How can the industry ignore these women and their health? Woman X writes:

"During the stimulation, I had the slightest abdominal swelling and wonderful feelings. I felt fertile, powerful, and strong. The process of growing these eggs felt beautiful, and for the first time in years I felt confident that I was doing something meaningful. I was looking forward to the retrieval, and was planning to go through additional donation cycles. I was visiting the clinic every couple of days now and usually saw the nurse and one of the doctors. A few days before the retrieval, the nurse became mildly alarmed at how many eggs had developed. I had developed slight ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. The doctor decided to proceed with egg retrieval.

I think they retrieved 28 eggs from my right ovary. The eggs were shared between the two couples, and embryos were made from all of my eggs using the sperm of the recipient fathers. Some of the embryos were implanted into the recipient mothers, and others were frozen for their later use. In my application I signed away all rights to know if a child was created from my donation, or to know anything about the children my eggs created.

Following the donation my abdomen became very swollen, but the fluid decreased over the following week. I had a couple of follow up appointments at the fertility clinic, and I thought I was on the mend. We discussed when to start the next donation cycle.

Eight days after the retrieval, I woke with a searing pain in my lower abdomen. It felt my insides were being tied tightly with a string. I tried to get out of bed and fainted from the pain. A friend drove me to the clinic. It was a Saturday so I saw the on-call doctor. She performed an ultrasound and said it was nothing more than my follicles shedding and that the pain would go away in a few days. She said, "If anything serious were wrong, you would know. You wouldn't have been able to walk into the clinic." I felt like the doctor thought I was being overly dramatic, making a big deal of a little cramping. Over the next three days my abdomen swelled, I was delirious with pain and fever, and couldn't move my bowels. Another friend drove me back to the clinic, and the nurse told me I needed an enema and to eat something and I would be fine. However, whenever I ate I would vomit. On the fifth day I couldn't stop vomiting. I spent an entire night vomiting stool."

Her full story is here.

Embryo Adoption in the News

'Embryo adoption' service seeks to give infertile couples a chance to have a family from PhysOrg.com

The day the frozen embryo arrived via FedEx was the day Maria Lancaster began experiencing firsthand what she had always believed: that human life begins at conception.

[...]

Note to my readers:

I still don't want to wholeheartedly endorse embryo adoption. We have to be up front about the fact that women endure potentially risky and unsafe ovarian hyperstimulation procedures in order to get lots of eggs. And that leads to the problem of surplus, extra, leftover, frozen embryos, but since Obama wants to release more federal dollars to do research using them, here is an ethical solution for those human embryos.

Italy and Germany have laws that do not permit the creation of "extra" embryos. All that are created MUST be implanted in the woman's womb.

Egg Donor Registry Needed

Many who follow my writings know that I have been working hard here in the U.S. to establish a federal registry that would track and follow up on every egg donor/egg donation in the country. The way I propose this registry, would be written broadly in order to capture not only egg donors, but also women undergoing ovarian hyperstimulation for their own fertility treatments. The process is the same, so the risks to women in general are shared. Makes no difference where they eggs end up once the ovarian hyperstimulation and egg retrieval is done.

Calla Papademas is a good example of an egg donor who appears no where in the medical literature. This practice should not be allowed to continue! It is reckless and does not treat women as patients, but egg factories.

My colleague, Dr. Jennifer Schneider, lost her daughter, Jessica Wing to colon cancer after selling her eggs three times. Her life and death are making the local news in Arizona papers today (sorry you have to free subscribe to read the articles). Here are some quotes and a picture of Jessica with her mother.


"We really don't know the long-term risks," said Dr. Jennifer Schneider, who practices internal medicine. These young women may take that as meaning there are no risks. Young women think they are invulnerable. But my daughter was like that, too, and at 31 she was gone.

Schneider's daughter, Jessica Grace Wing, a composer and filmmaker, died of colon cancer in 2003, two years after she was diagnosed with tumors in her colon and both ovaries."

"Wing had donated her eggs three times, beginning when she was a student at Stanford University.Her mother fears the egg donations may be linked to the cancer.

Wing's family has no history of any early cancer or colon cancer. Her grandfather died of non-colon cancer, but he was 85.A DNA tissue analysis performed after Wing's death showed no genetic mutations that would have predisposed her to developing cancer, her mother says"

Ivy League Egg Donor Wanted

The Yale Daily News ran this story in their paper. As is seen on many of the major academic university settings,

"Yale, for example, has its own anonymous egg donation program, called the Yale Oocyte Donation and Surrogacy Program, a subdivision of the Yale Fertility Center. The program compensates donors with $8,000, though administrators said donors are rarely motivated solely by money."

Once I was on the Fox Morning News with the head of the NYU egg donor program. He proudly announced that NYU only paid $8,000 to their egg "donors".

As soon as the Yale story broke, I fired off a letter to the editor, which wasn't published. Here's what I wrote:

Dear Editor,

I am concerned that young women in America are still given the impression that "egg donation" carries no risk. I have just returned from attending The Second World Congress on Mild Approaches in Assisted Reproduction in London and two days of international expert speakers addressed ovarian hyperstimulation (it is dangerous), the drugs used to stimulate ovaries to produce extra eggs (are harmful)and how current ovarian stimulation practices negatively affect the number of eggs available (women are not born with unlimited eggs).

The fertility industry in America is sorely unregulated and offering us a seal of approval from those within the industry who have conflicts of interest galore, does little to protect our young women and yes their future fertility, their health and in some cases, their lives.

We need to be sure that the young egg donor is treated with the same standard of care as the infertile woman. As of now, the infertile woman is treated as a patient and will benefit from the knowledge gained with the new trends that "less is better" in IVF medicine, but the young egg donor has been set up to be seen as a commodity to produce eggs.

Fading Follicles - the essence of ovarian ageing

This year I had made up my mind NOT to miss this conference. I could have kicked myself for not making the trip in 2007. But I am so glad that I did attend this year. I learned a lot, had much confirmed in my mind and came back with a brand new stack of business cards from some of the leading experts in reproductive medicine from around the world. Can you say, "cutting edge"?

I'll be writing and blogging on this for the next year I imagine, so bear with me.

One point which I went to London wanting to resolve in my mind is this:

As it relates to the young egg donor, are we jeopardizing her future fertility by depleting her of her own "ovarian reserve"? Since a young woman is born with a set amount of eggs, if we repeatedly hyperstimulate women, do we deprive them of eggs they will need to have their own babies?

One of the speakers at the conference was Professor Stephen G. Hillier, Editor-in-Chief of Molecular Human Reproduction, and with the Centre for Reproductive Biology at the University of Edinburgh.

The title of his talk was "fading follicles - the essence of ovarian ageing". Come on women, let's face it - we are most fertile in our 20's, so waiting to have our children will negatively impact our ability to have our children. As we age, our ovaries shrink and our eggs get old. At menopause, we have no eggs left.

What Prof. Hillier said in his plenary lecture grabbed my attention and led to my seeking him out on a conference break. Hillier commented on the current hyperstimulation practice and if it had a negative impact on oocytes available for recruitment. Does hyperstimulation substantially increase the number of follicles?

When I spoke with Prof. Hillier at the conference break and told him of my concern and explained how egg donation was practiced in the U.S., (hyperstimulation to get lots of eggs, no monitoring or tracking of the egg donors, no limits (only suggested guidelines) on the number of times women could donate their eggs) he was very concerned. I asked him about my hypothesis, on the math alone . . . are we risking depleting these young women of their ovarian reserve for their own baby making, he said there was no answer to my question. He said there is not a lot of scientific research on this topic. So, in my mind, the fact that this leading expert told me there was no answer is of great concern to me.

So again, we have no data, because no one has bothered to track, monitor, collect data. . .

Reckless Endangerment

My piece in Today's Dallas Morning News

OPINION - Viewpoints

Minimally invasive? More like reckless endangerment

Someone teach these men about the dangers of egg harvesting, says JENNIFER LAHL

12:00 AM CDT on Monday, May 14, 2007

John T. Gill, chairman of the Texas Healthcare Task Force, and Texas GOP Rep. Pete Sessions – to promote embryonic stem cell research – are telling everyone they can, including members of Congress, that egg harvesting from women is a "a simple, minimally invasive procedure."

One wonders, however, if these Southern gentlemen would still believe egg extraction was "minimally invasive" if it were done to men?

Here's what that would require: Donors would inject themselves daily with a hormone to first, shut down their testicular function. Then we'd shift to daily injections of another hormone that would cause their testicular function to go into warp speed and their testes to swell to abnormal size.

These daily injections would prepare the men to undergo a surgical procedure with anesthesia whereby a catheter with a needle at the end would be inserted into the testes to remove large quantities of sperm. After extraction, about 5 percent of the men would suffer side effects ranging from infection, damage to their future fertility and, in a few cases, even death.

One could forgive any men reading this far if they abruptly turned the page, but the above description is almost exactly what we are asking our young women to do as the debate shifts from eggs for babies to eggs for embryos that will be cloned for stem cell research.

Who is the anonymous female egg donor? She is the woman targeted and courted on virtually every college campus – like Calla Papademas, the 22-year-old Stanford student who suffered a stroke after answering an egg donor ad offering $15,000.

She is the poor woman trying to make ends meet – like Alina Netedu in Bucharest, the 19-year-old factory worker who lost her fertility selling her eggs to pay for her wedding.

She is countless others who are being told it is their civic duty to give some eggs for the cause.

What does this simple, minimally invasive procedure entail? Daily injections of powerful hormones, over about a month, to shut down the ovaries and then hyperstimulate them.

Normally women ovulate an egg or two each month. However, if we can trick the ovary and manipulate it, we can get more than a dozen eggs in one cycle. One egg donor commented to me, "My egg broker loved me, as I was easy to stimulate."

Following this hormonal injection regime, the woman's body is ready for the retrieval process. Anesthesia is administered so that a catheter with a needle at the end can be inserted into the vagina. The ovary is punctured, the eggs removed.

Simple and minimally invasive? Risks associated with ovarian stimulation such as ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome – which can cause stroke, organ failure, even death. Risks associated with anesthesia. Risks associated with the needle aspiration of the eggs from the ovaries which can cause internal hemorrhage.

Sadly, Dr. Gill and Mr. Sessions have not been following the positive trends and changes in fertility medical practice. Times are changing as fertility medicine moves to the more natural, minimal ovarian stimulation, women-friendly model of "less is better" for infertile women.

With so much at stake, ignorance of the medical facts is no excuse.

Jennifer Lahl is national director of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network and founder of Every Woman First. Her e-mail address is jennifer.lahl@cbc -network.org.

The Inconvenient Truth of Eggsploitation

Today in the Korea Times, "Egg Donation to be Banned" The government is expected to ban human egg donations late this year, a move apparently motivated by the scandal involving the country’s disgraced cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk.

Here is my take on all this:

It's human nature to want to explain away truths we'd rather ignore. Every morning millions of people convince themselves that the number on the bathroom scale simply can't be accurate. No fault divorce prevails as we no longer feel the need to fess up to what went wrong—we conveniently claim "irreconcilable differences". 21st century science is also ignoring truth in order to advance its biotechnology agenda. Unfortunately this agenda can be harmful and degrading to human dignity. Telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about difficult issues can just be too inconvenient.

Take a look at recent debates around the reproductive industry's use (and abuse) of young women as harvested eggs sell for a premium to wealthy infertile couples and human cloning researchers. Many would rather ignore the truth that women have a limited number of eggs available to start their family. Most people don't know that in utero, females begin with about 7 million eggs. By the time a baby girl is born, the number of eggs she has drops dramatically to between 1 and 2 million. And by the time this young girl enters puberty, the number of available eggs drops again, down to approximately 300 give or take a 100 or so. That's some attrition rate!

The college girl who thinks that earning some quick cash selling her eggs may have to deal with an inconvenient truth when she finds herself prematurely infertile. Egg harvesting often removes up to 40 eggs at a time. Add in the fact that it is not uncommon for young women to sell their eggs more than once. It is inconvenient to face the truth that egg donation is apt to destroy a young woman's future fertility, leaving her with a grossly depleted supply of eggs by the time she has the chance to start a family of her own.

What is the value of one's fecundity? Is any amount of money adequate to compensate for the grave risks egg donors take? And is it really accurate to characterize this transaction as egg "donation"? Although it may be inconvenient to acknowledge, since money changes hands we are really talking about a booming business—not donation. We inconveniently have to talk about supply and demand, and what the market will bear.

And the egg "donation" business is booming! Lots of people are making lots of money brokering eggs. It is easier to talk about out of pocket expenses and lost wages than the value of an egg from a collegiate with a high SAT score and a good genetic heritage. As it relates to research and egg compensation, this discussion has been all too inconvenient because you cannot get good informed consent when money enters the discussion. As soon as money is on the table, informed consent gets coerced, manipulated and bought—often for a hefty price.

Finally, it's inconvenient to talk about the health risks to young women who subject themselves to very powerful hormones to hyperstimulate their ovaries and then undergo anesthesia and surgery to have their eggs removed via a needle injected through the vaginal wall. Ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS) can lead to stroke, organ failure and even death. Reproductive cancers such as ovarian cancer are also looming realities for young women undergoing egg harvesting procedures. It seems these are truths that we would rather not discuss. They might jeopardize the egg trade and cloning research.

It is much more convenient to swear that women have been properly and adequately informed of the risks. It is easier to minimize the risks and reclassify women diagnosed with OHSS. In the Human Reproduction Update Vol. 9, No. 3, 2003, Drs. M.A. Aboulghar and R.T. Mansour of the Egyptian IVF Center in Cairo, present a review of the classifications of OHSS. Since 1967, when Rabau et. al. first outlined the classification of OHSS listing three categories of mild to moderate and then severe OHSS; shifts have taken place. Navot et. al. in 1992 eliminated mild and moderate categories and distinguished two categories under severe OHSS--severe and critical. In 1999, Rizk and Aboulghar eliminated the mild category since mild forms of OHSS occur in most patients after ovarian stimulation.
How convenient.

Most women will suffer at least mild OHSS, so the egg donation business doesn't document and track these cases. She didn't get sick enough. Can you imagine any drug or surgical procedure which may cause, say a fever in most people, but because most people experienced fever, we just stop tracking and reporting that? If statistics impede "scientific progress", we just redefine them out of existence. We can convince the public and ourselves that all is well. But when we deny inconvenient truths, real people suffer very real harm.

Jennifer Lahl is the National Director of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network and recently founded Every Woman First, Inc. which launched an international campaign of pro-choice and pro-life people called Hands Off Our Ovaries. This article originally ran in tothesource.org

Women Friendly Infertility Technology

One concern I have always had, was treating women like holstein cows. Using veterinary style medicine on infertile women. Pumping them full of potent hormones to turn them into breeding - egg spitting out machines. So, I have been following rather closely, a new woman friendly form of IVF. Here is a recent study from Dutch physicians on the topic:

Minimal-stimulation IVF 'suitable for all'
Source: Human Reproduction 2006; 21: 2375-83

Single oocyte IVF offers favorable implantation rates and a negligible
risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome.


A novel IVF protocol is being recommended by Dutch physicians, who say
that using a single oocyte is both low-risk and patient-friendly.

Their recommendation comes from a study of "minimal-stimulation" IVF, in
which a gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) antagonist was
administered at the late follicular phase together with recombinant
follicle stimulating hormone (FSH).

This protocol virtually eliminates the risk of ovarian hyperstimulation
syndrome, explain M. Pelinck (University Medical Center Groningen, The
Netherlands) and co-authors, as well as facilitating oocyte retrieval
and reducing the need for a resting cycle.


"Minimal-stimulation IVF is an attractive option for patients who, for
ethnical or religious reasons, are opposed to the generation of spare
embryos," they say.

In the present study, 336 women completed 844 cycles of IVF. The overall
pregnancy rate was 8.3 percent per cycle, and the cumulative pregnancy
rate after up to three cycles was 20.8 percent per patient. Subgroup
analysis found no difference in outcomes according to the indication for
IVF.

"Minimal stimulation seems suitable for all indications for conventional
IVF," Pelinck and team conclude.

"Owing to considerable loss in every step of the procedure, the embryo
transfer rate is low, but this is compensated by a favorable
implantation rate."

Posted: 5 September 2006

(c) Current Medicine Group 2006

I guess we just need a demo

If you have the time, you should read Bill Joy's famous essay in Wired mag 2000 "Why the future doesn't need us". It raised quite a stir as he detailed his concern over the convergence of technologies (genetic manipulation, nanotechnology and robotics). At a public event at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, when his colleagues were taking him to task on his luddite position, Joy, trying to make his case for the potential serious threat of these technologies said, "I guess we just need a demo". Similarly, in the bioagenda today, there is no concern for what is called the pre-cautionary principle, exercising caution if threat or harm is unknown or uncertain. The british news is reporting on the death of one woman from Ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome and the many abuses of Romanian egg donors. How many more demos do we need?