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.

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HANDSOFF NEWS:

Appiontment Announcement: HandsOff is pleased to announce three new appointments. Joining our Board of Directors is San Francisco State student Nicole Marchand. Nicole served as a HandsOff intern during this past year and is majoring in International Relations. Joan K. Higgs is joining our advisory board. Joan is working on her masters degree in social anthropology at Simon Frasier University, British Columbia, Canada. Her master's thesis addresses a crucial topic: feminism's complex relationship with reproductive and bio-technologies. Our new intern is Kelly Anderson. A student at Georgetown University, Kelly is working on an overview of egg donation in the U.S. Welcome Nicole, Joan, and Kelly! We're lucky to have you on board. TOP

NEWS:

Thousands of human eggs may be missing Bankrupt egg-donor registry says fertility doctors may have transferred eggs without permission, Monday, 23 July 2007 More than 100 fertility doctors in dozens of states may have brokered unauthorized transfers of human eggs, according to the bankruptcy court filing of a local company and its former records supervisor.

Options National Fertility Registry was forced out of business in 2003 after getting caught up in a tangle of lawsuits in Texas, the court filing says.

An Options donor, identified only as "Elizabeth," had contracted to donate her eggs to one infertile couple, and later learned that the doctor gave some of her eggs to a second couple without her knowledge, permission or consent, the bankruptcy documents say.

Elizabeth sued, and settled with the doctor out of court.

In the wake of this revelation, Options, of Santa Fe Springs, combed through every "post-cycle" report it received from doctors over a dozen years of business. Those reports detail how many eggs each donor produced, and what became of those eggs. Options initially found that 83 egg donation arrangements contained discrepancies and irregularities in the number of eggs retrieved, fertilized, transferred, frozen and/or disposed of.

"To put it simply, there are many eggs and embryos that are unaccounted for," the bankruptcy petition says.

Some doctors refused to provide post-cycle reports at all, said Melinda Lansford, Options' medical records supervisor for six years.

More recent audits of Options' records suggest that there were 596 embryos, and 2,189 eggs, unaccounted for. More than 300 post-cycle reports had irregularities, involving 80 medical facilities, 102 physicians and 229 donors.

"I wanted to help people have children, and I believed that this whole business was about the same thing," Lansford said.

Lansford agreed to speak on the record Saturday after years of keeping a low profile because she has recently been diagnosed with an aggressive form of thyroid cancer.

"I consider it a wake-up call," she said. "This needs to be known. I couldn't go on knowing that these women weren't aware of what's going on, and that the children resulting from these arrangements would have no link to their genetic roots."

For full story visit: OCRegister.com TOP

Stem cells 'to boost' risky egg trade: Anna Salleh, ABC Science Online, Thursday, 5 July 2007, Poor women are already selling their eggs to pay the rent, new research shows. Now the added demand for eggs for stem cell research may place extra pressure on them. Demand for eggs for stem cell research will put vulnerable women at increased pressure to sell their ova to unscrupulous dealers, says an Australian researcher.

This may not be such an issue for well regulated countries like Australia, says Associate Professor Catherine Waldby of the University of Sydney.

But she says it is more likely to affect women in poorly regulated countries, who already supply eggs to rich nations for IVF programs, and whose health can suffer as a result.

"There have been various serious medical problems develop in women involved in selling eggs," says Waldby.

For full story visit: ABC.net TOP