The HandsOff Newsletter features articles concerning policies, controversies, and ethics relevant to egg harvesting for cloning research; this may include articles reporting medical information learned from the IVF industry. Similarly, articles concerning global egg trafficking in the IVF industry are relevant and may be included since the increased demand for eggs for research will likely build on these already ongoing global arrangements. Additionally, as a service, the Newsletter may include articles concerning biotech patenting, animal-human hybrid creation (chimerism), stem cell research and reproductive cloning in so far as they may be relevant to considerations of research cloning and, therefore, egg donation.
In 1999, then Stanford University student, Calla Papademas, suffered a stroke and brain damage after beginning ovarian hyperstimulation for egg harvesting. Calla tells her story in this new short video (13 mins).
Calla's story dramatically underscores the fact that women take serious but poorly understood risks when they submit to the egg extraction process. Please share this film with others you know and invite them to join the call for a global moratorium on egg harvesting for research cloning until such time as global discourse and scientific research yields information sufficient to establish adequate informed consent.
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.
Whatever your experience, we would appreciate hearing your story. If you know others who have undergone egg harvesting for fertility or research we would appreciate hearing their story, too. Contact us to talk
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