Egg Donation and Surrogacy

Last week we announced the launch of four new locations for NAFG, in Atlanta, Dallas, Miami and Washington, DC.

We believe that by expanding our pool of egg donors, gestational carriers, and clients, it will be even easier for donors, recipients, gestational carriers and intended parents to take advantage of our services.  Press releases are linked below:

• Washington, DC
• Atlanta
• Miami
• Dallas

“Our new locations will offer the opportunity for our egg donors, gestational carriers, and intended parents to work locally, or take advantage of our recruitment efforts in other cities across the country. This makes NAFG unique among surrogacy and egg donation programs.”  – Sanford Benardo, Founder and President, Northeast Assisted Fertility Group

The Washington Times has run an article, “Our bodies, our sales: No windfalls in plasma, egg donations” stating that while egg donation and surrogacy may provide financial payoffs, the criteria and long-term implications should be taken into consideration.  Kathy Benardo, director of the NAFG egg donor program, is quoted throughout this article on the economy’s impact on egg donation:

“I can get up to 100 applications a week.  Some don’t follow through when they see the screening they have to go through. Some are out of our age range [of 21 to 29 years old]. I even once got an application from a man. We also have a body-mass index qualification and an educational level qualification.”

Click here to read the article.

New York State’s 11-year, $600 million stem cell research initiative was approved as part of last year’s state budget; now labs can pay women to donate their eggs for research.  We are not sure yet what portion of the budget will fund the study of human oocytes (eggs), how the oocyte donors will be recruited, and how much the donors will be paid (although compensation will be within limits set by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM).

The full text of the resolution and public statement can be found on the NYSTEM website, “ESSCB Statement on the Compensation of Oocyte Donors” (New York State Stem Cell Science).

We will continue to post on this issue as we learn more.

I review about one hundred egg donor applications a week. Of those I receive, only about three or four get posted on our database. Some very good candidates never get posted because we don’t have good photos of them. Even the best candidates cannot be matched without good photos.

We just added “Photo Submission Guidelines” to our Information for Egg Donors and Egg Donor Application pages so donors can have a better understanding of how the photos should look.

Photos are required to post on your profile for recipients to view. Photos are essential to attracting prospective recipients to your profile. Recipients use photos to evaluate the donor’s resemblance to them, the donor’s attractiveness, and the donor’s demeanor, temperament, “vibe,” “energy,” or whatever you want to call it. So three important qualities are required of every photo: it needs to be clear, flattering, and show you with a pleasing expression.

I can’t tell you how many photos I receive that show candidates carousing in a dark bar (with a beer in her hand!) among a crowd of people, taken on a cellphone with an unflattering view up the nostrils and out of focus, in a ski suit and goggles or Halloween costume that conceal all her features, taken inside a dark, messy room with a flash that makes the eyes red and the complexion washed out, taken so close-up it’s scary, showing the donor with a funny face, a scowl, or her tongue sticking out, taken when she’s just rolled out of bed and her hair’s a mess and she looks half asleep, cropped out of a group shot with a resolution so low you can barely see a thing: the list goes on and on. Photos like these will never attract recipients to your profile, no matter how pretty and smart you are.

What we are looking for is not so difficult to provide. Both headshots and full body shots should show you alone in natural light. The resolution should be high; each shot should be well lit and in focus. The backdrops should be pleasant and not distracting. Expressions should be smiling and pleasant. Amateur photos are fine as long as they meet these criteria. Have a friend take some for you if necessary.

Egg donor photos are not so different from dating service photos: they serve to attract a match.

Katherine Benardo, director of the egg donation program at Northeast Assisted Fertility Group, will be among the panelists on CBS’ Early Show this Saturday morning.  There will also be an egg donor candidate and a doctor (Dr. Zeke Emanuel, brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel) for the panel discussion, which will be shot live in the studio.

Date: Saturday, February 7
Time: 7:30AM

We will post more details as they become available.  Click here for CBS’ official page for The Early Show.

Tonight, Cindy Hsu of CBS New York contributed yet another story about the growing popularity of egg donation, featuring Northeast Assisted Fertility Group’s egg donor program.

“If you’re motivated you can do a wonderful thing and help somebody and help yourself at the same time, but do not think that this is a way to walk into $10,000 and pick up your check,” said Northeast Assisted Fertility’s Sanford Bernardo.

“In fact, the payment is not for your eggs. You’re not selling eggs. It’s for the time and suffering involved.”

Click here to see the video.

This time it’s in the Boston Herald. Sanford Benardo is quoted:

“Benardo said the egg donation and surrogacy agency has seen applications from potential egg donors double — the [egg donation] agency pays female donors a flat rate of $10,000 after a woman’s eggs are retrieved.”

The article acknowledges that making money through egg donation is not quick and easy. Furthermore, the depressed economy is diminishing the demand for egg donors, making it even harder.

CNN video: “Egg Donors on the Rise” – click the “Play” button below to watch:

The CNN segment on egg donation (“Egg Donors on the Rise”) was pretty fair, but it left some large components out of the story:

• The Doctors.
  • The reporter did not speak to any fertility doctors who perform these medical procedures to get their opinion on the alleged surge in egg donation. This may be because doctors are probably not seeing any actual increase. As we’ve said many times on this blog, any woman can apply to be an egg donor, but the majority will never actually donate because they are not qualified, or cannot find an egg donor recipient to be matched with. Fertility treatments are expensive, and the economy may affect patients’ ability to pay for them just as much as it motivates women to donate.
  • Doctors could also speak to the efficacy of egg donation (about 50% of embryos transfers result in a live birth), as well as the risks, which I believe were overstated in the piece. The chance of hyperstimulation is about 1%, and since it is always treated, it is not severe.
• The Donor Egg Recipients.
  • Infertility is why egg donation exists in the first place. Maybe it would have been hard to find a family willing to admit on national TV that they used an egg donor, but they could have acknowledged the disease of infertility (I was able to, briefly). It affects millions of people.

I was also surprised to see Debora Spar (an economist who is now president of Barnard College) express such a negative view of compensated egg donation. It seems at odds with the attitudes expressed in her book, The Baby Business, which describes the need for political debate and regulation. She is extremely knowledgeable, but her five-second sound bite left a bad taste in my mouth. Fertility treatments are indeed highly regulated by the FDA and professional organizations (the ASRM, for example), yet analogies to the “wild west” persist.

Nothing in the story was new, but the background of the bad economy makes the headline “Women Sell Their Eggs for Money!” all the more sensational. Commercial egg donation has been around for at least fifteen years. If it weren’t for the compensation, it would be difficult to get donor eggs for infertile couples. So egg donors are paid, according to ASRM regulations. In the United States, it’s legal and safe. As usual, most journalism is not particularly interested in the reality of egg donation and surrogacy, which is indeed fascinating but too complicated for a three-minute story.

I would recommend Liza Mundy’s Everything Conceivable (Knopf, 2007) for a multifaceted, intelligent, and compassionate journalistic treatment of the subject.  (See also Randi Kaye’s “Eggonomics” entry on the CNN site.)

Date: Monday, December 10

Time: 10:00 PM

<Click to watch the CNN video, “Egg Donors on the Rise”>

Tune to CNN for Anderson Cooper’s coverage of egg donation, which features Northeast Assisted Fertility Group:

TONIGHT: Dough for eggs!  Tough times can mean ‘eggceptional’ measures. See why women are lining up in clinics across the nation to donate their eggs! You won’t believe the going rate.  Go to CNN.com to read the rest.

Click here to watch the Anderson Cooper 360 webcast, or tune into the studio webcam.  CNN is also welcoming bloggers (or anyone interested in egg donation) to join the Anderson Cooper Live Blog to discuss the segment in real time.

NAFG’s position remains steadfast: we believe that infertility is a disease, for which egg donation is an effective treatment. NAFG egg donors are paid only for their time and effort, and not for the outcome of the egg retrieval.  Our recipients, in turn, get the opportunity to have a child. As long as egg donor compensation is not coercive, we believe that all parties will benefit — with minimal medical or financial risk.