Eggs-for-Money Scandal

You may or may not be familiar with the need of the developing sciences of SCNT (Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer) = cloning and hESCR = human Embryonic Stem Cell Research for fresh human eggs. hESCR needs cloning to progress and cloning absolutely needs eggs or it's a non-existent science. Eggs come from women, and unfortunately, (or fortunately) human women are not chickens and the idea of just walking in and picking them up is a laugh. Even the idea that eggs might be as easy to collect as sperm is far from the mark. No, no, to collect a woman's eggs, the general process is to give her a heavy dose of drugs to cause hyper-stimulation, bring her into a doctors office and physically remove them from inside her body. Possible side effects are heavy bleeding, hemorrhaging, organ failure, infertility, and death.

Small price to pay for the good of moving science forward?

Now, because eggs are so needed, it would be cynically logical to assume that someone somewhere would probably be willing to pay a woman to go through this process and provide him/her with eggs. You may be surprised to learn that this is not only completely LEGAL, but it is not just someone somewhere, it's most universities, scientists, and institutes who want to engage in cloning research. Without so much as a whisper of discussion about whether this is ethically a good idea and whether it's good for women, there is already a booming market in women's eggs.

Young college women (preferably smart, beautiful, and very fertile) and poor minority women are the best candidates here in the States - both ripe for the sell because of their financial position. Internationally, it is about the same, though the preference is generally given to whole populations of poor women in countries like Romania or the Czech Republic. Another simple group to target is female research assistants - most infamously promoted by now-disgraced South Korean research, Dr. Hoo-Suk Hwang.

So, where are we now? Well, things are well underway no doubt, but even so, this eggs-for-money scandal is starting to gin up a little attention - a Feminist organization of pro-life and pro-choice women started a group called Hands Off our Ovaries - http://handsoffourovaries.com/ There have been numerous articles in the UK about the egg market recently...particularly on the practice of using poor women in other countries. Even in the US some controversy has started to arise about the blatant advertising in college newspapers that entice women to risk their health and lives for the sake of a fat check.