Hello everyone in reproduction, since our microchip group is now non-existant, I would like to know what exactly our reprocution focus is. I believe it was sperm donation. We need to divide the work amongst ourselves, so please post some ideas on work assignments. Also, we need to get information on the legislative procedure so we can divide up work for the bill. I will gladly create a powerpoint since I'm really good at them. I will be conducting research this weekend. Thanks.
hey guys..we can choose from a couple ideas here. one would be that the fertility companies are overcharging infertile couples with faulty or inadequate material and a legislation could be to set a standard price. another is the possibility of finding the parent who donated the sperm or egg and asking for child support; legislation against this possibility. it's a shady business so i'm sure we can find more issues out there. any ideas?
SUMMARY: Using Donor Eggs for in Vitro Fertilization is One of the Fastest-Growing Infertility Treatments Today. But Women Struggle with Questions of maternal Authenticity, the Ethics of Their Choice and How, If at All, to Talk to Their Children About Their Origins.
Their is a part were the woman admits to checking the SAT scores of the donor, which could be relevant to our prospective focus: it's about a quarter of a way down the article.
I still think we should specifically do the following:
It should be made illegal for sperm and egg donors to be payed for their donation based on their qualifications (educational, athletic, fitness, etc).
I think it would be fairly straightforward to construct a bill based on this, and it is an intensly ethical issue
This would work, as it has people being judged on conditions that may be purely physical(attractiveness for example) with no standard quantifiable means. Not to mention in real life it doesn't work like that (with genetic trait selection)
A major competitor is California Cryobank. It pays donors $75 per specimen--with occasional gift vouchers and movie tickets thrown in. Customers pay $240-400 per specimen, depending on sperm count. Basic information about donors--height, weight, colouring, occupation--comes free, but further information must be paid for. A facial-features report, listing such attributes as "nostril flare" (narrow, average or large), costs $12; an audio interview is another $25. For $65 a customer can buy a package of baby photo, audio tape, full personal profile, psychological profile, essay, description of the clinic staff's impression of him and facial-features report. She can hire a consultant to help her choose a donor, at $80 for 30 minutes. At a cost of thousands, she can store vials from a donor in order to be able to have more children by him in the future. The clinic will buy back unwanted vials for half their original price.
The Stanford Daily has a "Donors Wanted" heading in its classified section; Jewish, Asian and East Indian women are in high demand, as are those who are tall, athletic and clever--with doctorates or SAT scores above 1,350 often specified.
I have read the entire "Your Gamete, Myself" article from Dr. Fagan's folder, and have come across some very important quotes:
"Becky clicked on a photo of a 22-year-old brunette with a toothy grin. Each profile listed the donor's age (many agencies consider donors to be over the hill by 30), hair color (there seemed to be a preponderance of blondes), eye color, weight, ethnicity, marital status, education level, high school or college G.P.A.'s, college major, evidence of "proved" fertility (having children of their own or previous successful cycles). Some agencies include blood type for recipients who don't plan to tell their child about his conception. Others include bust size and favorite movies, foods and TV shows. One newly pregnant woman told me she picked her donor because the woman liked "The Princess Bride." "Some donors chose 'Pulp Fiction,' and their favorite color was black," she said."
"Jewish donors, along with Asians, Ivy Leaguers and those with proven fertility, are considered "exceptional donors" and can command a hefty premium. A recruitment ad on New York's Craigslist offered up to $10,000 for Asian donors. On some sites I visited, agencies were asking $15,000 for donors with proven fertility. There have been reports of agencies charging more than double that for other highly desirable women."
"Yet there is often no way to know whether the information the donor gives, including her medical history and educational background, is accurate. A 2006 study conducted by researchers at New York University found that donors routinely lowballed their weight, and the heavier they were the more they fudged."
"To discourage both fraud and undue inducement, the ethics committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (A.S.R.M.) issued a position paper in 2006 on donor compensation: $5,000, they determined, was a reasonable but not coercive fee. Anything beyond that needed "justification," and sums over $10,000 went "beyond what is appropriate." What's more, the committee denounced paying more for "personal attributes," saying that the practice commodifies human gametes.
Those guidelines, however, are unenforceable among both A.S.R.M. physician members and the donor agencies listed on the group's Web site as pledging compliance. A survey published in May of medical clinics with egg-donor programs (which are presumably under greater pressure to act ethically than unlicensed agencies) found that although donors received an average of $4,217 nationally, at least one clinic brokered a $10,000 fee and another $15,000; a recent Craigslist post directing new recruits to Columbia University Medical Center offered $8,000 to new recruits. One in five clinics considered the donor's fertility history or ethnicity in establishing rates"
"The word donor, then, may actually be a misnomer -- at least in this country, where the free market prevails. Internationally, when governments say it, they mean it. Canada and France ban payments to egg donors. Britain reimburses expenses up to about $500 after submission of receipts; before deciding to forbid donation, Italy experimented with a partial "mirror" system, a kind of genetic tit-for-tat in which a husband donates sperm to shorten his wife's waiting time for donor eggs. No nation has a pool of donors anywhere near the size of that in the United States."
This the conclusion of a study on Fertility Clinic Websites by 2004 ASRM/SART guildines. The report was published in 2006:
significant proportion of SART- member fertility clinics, both private and academic, that have websites are not following the ASRM/SART guidelines for advertising. Increased dissemination and awareness of the guidelines is warranted.
16 comments:
yo
Hello everyone in reproduction, since our microchip group is now non-existant, I would like to know what exactly our reprocution focus is. I believe it was sperm donation. We need to divide the work amongst ourselves, so please post some ideas on work assignments. Also, we need to get information on the legislative procedure so we can divide up work for the bill. I will gladly create a powerpoint since I'm really good at them. I will be conducting research this weekend. Thanks.
Brian
hey guys..we can choose from a couple ideas here. one would be that the fertility companies are overcharging infertile couples with faulty or inadequate material and a legislation could be to set a standard price. another is the possibility of finding the parent who donated the sperm or egg and asking for child support; legislation against this possibility.
it's a shady business so i'm sure we can find more issues out there. any ideas?
ali
Go here to look at NJ legislative bills:
http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/bills/BillsBySubject.asp
This is a simple bill that is easy to understand, so you can get a feeling for what we have to do..
http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2006/Bills/A1000/688_I1.PDF
This is a link of the article that Dr. Fagan gave me:
http://www.peggyorenstein.com/articles/2007_gamete.html
SUMMARY:
Using Donor Eggs for in Vitro Fertilization is One of the Fastest-Growing Infertility Treatments Today. But Women Struggle with Questions of maternal Authenticity, the Ethics of Their Choice and How, If at All, to Talk to Their Children About Their Origins.
Their is a part were the woman admits to checking the SAT scores of the donor, which could be relevant to our prospective focus: it's about a quarter of a way down the article.
I still think we should specifically do the following:
It should be made illegal for sperm and egg donors to be payed for their donation based on their qualifications (educational, athletic, fitness, etc).
I think it would be fairly straightforward to construct a bill based on this, and it is an intensly ethical issue
This would work, as it has people being judged on conditions that may be purely physical(attractiveness for example) with no standard quantifiable means. Not to mention in real life it doesn't work like that (with genetic trait selection)
Here is an excerpt from an article i found. The link is:
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=10&hid=5&sid=2341e993-2f83-482d-a2c6-060d0333531d%40sessionmgr7
A major competitor is California Cryobank. It pays donors $75 per specimen--with occasional gift vouchers and movie tickets thrown in. Customers pay $240-400 per specimen, depending on sperm count. Basic information about donors--height, weight, colouring, occupation--comes free, but further information must be paid for. A facial-features report, listing such attributes as "nostril flare" (narrow, average or large), costs $12; an audio interview is another $25. For $65 a customer can buy a package of baby photo, audio tape, full personal profile, psychological profile, essay, description of the clinic staff's impression of him and facial-features report. She can hire a consultant to help her choose a donor, at $80 for 30 minutes. At a cost of thousands, she can store vials from a donor in order to be able to have more children by him in the future. The clinic will buy back unwanted vials for half their original price.
same article, another good quote:
The Stanford Daily has a "Donors Wanted" heading in its classified section; Jewish, Asian and East Indian women are in high demand, as are those who are tall, athletic and clever--with doctorates or SAT scores above 1,350 often specified.
Good article..
I have read the entire "Your Gamete, Myself" article from Dr. Fagan's folder, and have come across some very important quotes:
"Becky clicked on a photo of a 22-year-old brunette with a toothy grin. Each profile listed the donor's age (many agencies consider donors to be over the hill by 30), hair color (there seemed to be a preponderance of blondes), eye color, weight, ethnicity, marital status, education level, high school or college G.P.A.'s, college major, evidence of "proved" fertility (having children of their own or previous successful cycles). Some agencies include blood type for recipients who don't plan to tell their child about his conception. Others include bust size and favorite movies, foods and TV shows. One newly pregnant woman told me she picked her donor because the woman liked "The Princess Bride." "Some donors chose 'Pulp Fiction,' and their favorite color was black," she said."
More Importantly, here's the other:
"Jewish donors, along with Asians, Ivy Leaguers and those with proven fertility, are considered "exceptional donors" and can command a hefty premium. A recruitment ad on New York's Craigslist offered up to $10,000 for Asian donors. On some sites I visited, agencies were asking $15,000 for donors with proven fertility. There have been reports of agencies charging more than double that for other highly desirable women."
"Yet there is often no way to know whether the information the donor gives, including her medical history and educational background, is accurate. A 2006 study conducted by researchers at New York University found that donors routinely lowballed their weight, and the heavier they were the more they fudged."
"To discourage both fraud and undue inducement, the ethics committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (A.S.R.M.) issued a position paper in 2006 on donor compensation: $5,000, they determined, was a reasonable but not coercive fee. Anything beyond that needed "justification," and sums over $10,000 went "beyond what is appropriate." What's more, the committee denounced paying more for "personal attributes," saying that the practice commodifies human gametes.
Those guidelines, however, are unenforceable among both A.S.R.M. physician members and the donor agencies listed on the group's Web site as pledging compliance. A survey published in May of medical clinics with egg-donor programs (which are presumably under greater pressure to act ethically than unlicensed agencies) found that although donors received an average of $4,217 nationally, at least one clinic brokered a $10,000 fee and another $15,000; a recent Craigslist post directing new recruits to Columbia University Medical Center offered $8,000 to new recruits. One in five clinics considered the donor's fertility history or ethnicity in establishing rates"
Just one more:
"The word donor, then, may actually be a misnomer -- at least in this country, where the free market prevails. Internationally, when governments say it, they mean it. Canada and France ban payments to egg donors. Britain reimburses expenses up to about $500 after submission of receipts; before deciding to forbid donation, Italy experimented with a partial "mirror" system, a kind of genetic tit-for-tat in which a husband donates sperm to shorten his wife's waiting time for donor eggs. No nation has a pool of donors anywhere near the size of that in the United States."
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/kenned
y_institute_of_ethics_journal/v
011/11.3holland.pdf
This the conclusion of a study on Fertility Clinic Websites by 2004 ASRM/SART guildines. The report was published in 2006:
significant proportion of SART-
member fertility clinics, both private and academic, that have websites are not following the ASRM/SART guidelines for advertising. Increased dissemination and awareness of the guidelines is warranted.
Post a Comment