Egg donation poses risks for fertility clinics: study questions risk info given to donors.

They appear in almost every college newspaper and urban entertainment weekly. Enticing advertisements promise thousands of dollars to young women willing to donate eggs to help infertile couples conceive. For many, this seems like a win-win proposition -- you get needed money for school while helping others have a child they desperately want.

But oocyte donation, as the process is more formally known, is not exactly a risk-free procedure. Reported complications include induction of premenstrual syndrome-like symptoms, ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), and a possible increased risk of ovarian cancer due to the strong fertility drugs administered.

With more and more couples seeking donor eggs and a shortage of women willing to part with theirs, some ethicists worry that assisted fertility programs have too much incentive to play down the risks and offer women ever-increasing sums of money.

"Egg donation programs need to recruit oocyte donors to maintain a financially viable business," says Andrea D. Gurmankin, MA, a graduate student in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics in Philadelphia. "I think that offering young women thousands of dollars combined with the incentives that these programs have to minimize the risk has the potential to lead to a very bad situation."

Gurmankin published a pilot study in the fall 2001 issue of the American Journal of Bioethics that evaluated the risk information provided by several in vitro fertilization (IVF) programs during preliminary phone interviews.

Posing as a potential donor, Gurmankin called 19 different programs nationwide and asked for information about the egg-retrieval process and any risks involved. Here are some of her findings:

* 26% of the programs called did not volunteer information about the procedure or any risks involved.

* 21% of the programs would not answer questions about the procedure or about the risks of the procedure over the phone, instead referring the caller to information that would be sent by mail.

When the information sent by mail…