Compensating Women Who Donate Egg Cells for Research - Book Report/Review Example

 Ethics: Compensating women who donate egg cells for research Women who donate oocytes (egg cells) for research purposes deserve to be compensated for their time and trouble according to philosopher Bonnie Steinbock; a specialist in bioethics and a professor of philosophy at the State University of New York (SUNY).Thus, “New York’s Empire State Cell Board voted to allow funding of research on stem cell lines derived using eggs donated solely for research purposes”, making it possible for donor to be compensated for her time, burden, expense as well as discomfort. Alan Trounson, president of the California Institute for regenerative medicine objecting; told the Chronicle for Higher Education that stem cell researchers require large amounts of eggs only when they plan to create embryonic stem cells via cloning. Other scientists are attempting less controversial methods of deriving stem cells like pluripotent stem cells. Trounson claims that institute reviewers “have not supported any recent applications for nuclear transfer in the human but are supporting many iPS cell studies.”Trounson added that leading scientists think that iPS cells provide something more than nuclear transfer at present. Consequently, even if cloning does not prove fruitful as a source of stem cells, human oocytes may have other uses in research. George Daley in New York Times, points out that; “There are many questions you can only answer by studying human eggs.”The objection, however, does not address payment ethics at all. If oocytes are not required for research, women will not be encouraged to donate. The payment question is whether they should be compensated on donation Concerns such as overexploitation of women, induced to donate by the prospect of making like $10,000 per cycle have been raised. Rev.Thomas V. Berg says it will be the vulnerable classes (college-aged and cash strapped women) who will be exploited in this scheme by the state. Undue inducement is generally a real concern in egg donation. Earning $5000-$10,000 would be very attractive for most women, leading them to discount burdens and risks. However, the risks and burdens are precisely the same, in spite of what the eggs are used for. The possibility of exploitation does not justify treating donors differently. Furthermore, women who are provided with full information regarding the burdens and risks are surely able to make decisions of whether or not to donate for themselves (Steinbock, Langwith, 2012). Everyone involved in infertility treatment gets paid; justice therefore requires reasonable compensation for the burden, expense, discomfort, risks and time occasioned by the procedure. It is accepted practice for women, who offer eggs to other women to have babies, and the same consideration applies in eggs for research; since the burden, expense, risks as well as time are identical. Women who offer eggs to other women who want babies have altruistic motives; however, no woman is willing to undergo rigors of donating eggs to strangers without some compensation. The ethics board points out that, “The social value of the research is potentially greater than that of enabling individuals to reproduce.” This argument implies that the research is morally permissible and potentially highly valuable, and that similar cases should be treated alike, a basic principle of justice and reason (Steinbock, Langwith, 2012). The other argument claims that it is not ethical to pay women to donate eggs for research cloning. Thus proponents say that, “paying women for eggs will necessarily lead to the undue inducement and consequent exploitation of women.”According to Thomas Berg, New York’s Empire State Cell Board erred when it voted to allow researchers to compensate women for their eggs. Berg claims that poor women, requiring money will be compelled to donate their eggs regardless of very grave serious health risks related with egg harvesting procedure. Berg, a Roman Catholic priest and executive director of the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person, claims that compensating women for their eggs will lead to their exploitation. If adopted, this measure by New York’s full stem board will “mimic the long-established practice in the assisted-reproduction industry of paying up to $10,000 per retrieval.”New York will further use state monies to “reimburse” women directly for their egg donations, thus handing over thousands of taxpayer dollars to nay woman undergoing the dangerous procedure of donating eggs. Several states have disallowed such aggressive monetary reimbursements, including Massachusetts and California, all of them very enthusiastic about stem cell research. Arthur Caplan pro-cloning advocate believes compensating women for eggs is a bad idea. The market in eggs will incentivize women in doing something they otherwise would not have done and therefore egg sales as well as rebates are not the ethical way to do things. Compensating women is wrong since egg donation entails serious health risks for donors; comprising of “moderate to serious ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS).”OHSS is a condition which leads to bloating and nausea, organ failure, loss of fertility, and death. Time magazine recently highlighted, the long-term risks to egg donors are not known basically because, “they have never actually been studied” (Berg, Langwith, 2012). A study done by Dr. Jennifer Schneider and Wendy Kramer surveyed 155 egg donors regarding some of the long-term outcomes in regard to their donation experience discovered almost one-third of donors suffered health complications related with OHSS, and 5% suffered subsequent infertility; meaning the long term risks of egg donation are fundamentally unknown; thus the donors’ “informed consent” at the time of donation is a joke. However, when looking at the potential of $5000-$10, 000, majority of poor women won’t give a damn. This is one reason why compensating women for eggs will inevitably lead to the undue incentive and subsequent exploitation of women. By contrast, a voluntary donor “is much more likely to calmly weigh the cons and pros of donation, and only go through with it if she feels strongly enough that she is doing good.”Presently egg donation agencies across the country are reporting a sharp increase in applicants to donate eggs, as high as 55% in some places compared with the same period last year. Last December, Robin von Halle, president of Alternative Reproductive Resources, a Chicago-based fertility clinic, told the Wall Street Journal “Whenever the employment rate is down, we get more calls.”Additionally, some men are even offering up their wives, a very scary thing. Most probably, the donated eggs are used for creating human embryos particularly for research purposes to attempts at human cloning (Berg, Langwith, 2012). From the above articles, the following turns out to be the strongest arguments; on the pro-egg donation argument, firstly, everybody working in infertility treatment gets paid-it therefore seems logical for egg donors to be compensated since they in most cases undergo severe discomfort, risks as well as burdens while donating. Secondly, women providing eggs to other women who want to have babies is a practice that has been accepted, it therefore makes sense if the same consideration is applied in the case of eggs for research because the expense, time, risks and burdens are identical. On the objecting side, the following came out as very strong arguments. Firstly, compensating women for their eggs will most likely lead to the undue inducement and consequent exploitation of women. This basically means that those women who are cash strapped and have no other means of raising money will most likely donate their eggs for money in the process leading to their exploitation. Secondly, egg donation entails very serious health risks for women, comprising of moderate to severe ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), a medical condition which can cause anything from bloating to nausea, loss of fertility organ failure and death. Good health cannot be replaced; not even by money! Read More