Legal, ethical issues remain in egg donation.

2002 MAR 14 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Are human eggs being sold?

Yes, and it's a violation of human dignity, according to critics such as Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet. "I think it's deeply problematic," she has said, "to encourage women, for money, to sell their reproductive capacities and their parenting rights, both of which are at issue in egg sale transactions."

But Dr. William R. Keye Jr., president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, answers the same question with an emphatic no.

His group, which has 8600 members, views monetary payment to egg donors the same way federal and state laws view compensation to organ and tissue donors: It is for the work the donor goes through so that an organ or tissue can be retrieved, not for the organ or tissue itself.

The group's ethical guidelines say payment to donors of "$5000 or more requires justification and sums above $10,000 go beyond what is appropriate" - though Keye said cost-of-living increases may help explain why New York City area clinics recently raised their payments to $7000.

In any case, studies show that donors are not providing their eggs for the money, but rather largely for altruistic reasons, he said.

Most states ban only the sale of tissues that are considered nonreplenishable, said Kenneth F. Baum, a physician and attorney in New Haven, Conn., who has studied the legal aspects of egg donation. According to Baum, human eggs, like sperm and blood, are regarded as replenishable.