Are Egg Donors Patients Too? Eggonomics, Bio-profits, and the Implications for Egg Donor Care

• In Event: The New Bioeconomy in Eggs: Innovations, Interruptions and Regenerations in the Management of Human Oocytes

Abstract

In the United States, the ways in which human eggs are transacted reflect broader neo-liberal ideals surrounding free markets and laws of supply and demand. In many other western countries, donor compensation is either limited or prohibited, and third-party reproduction is regulated to varying degrees. By comparison, the un- or under-regulated terrain of third party reproduction in the US reflects a broader privatized, for-profit medical system that is virtually unencumbered by government intervention. As such, the US human egg market reflects a stratified system, and is a microcosm for exploring how some individuals—based on genetic, presumed genetic, phenotypic and social traits, along with medical markers for high fertility—are considered to have more economic value than others. Commercialized egg provision—while cloaked in the language of “donation"—can have a range of implications for women who provide eggs. Drawing upon ethnographic research among fertility professionals, qualitative interviews with 100 compensated egg donors, and 170 structured egg donor surveys, this paper examines three intersecting themes: 1) how eggs—and the women who provide them—are deferentially chosen, valued, and compensated; 2) how fresh vs. frozen eggs are transacted, exchanged, shared, bought, sold, and banked; and 3) how the commercial value of eggs as products and profit potential—and the ability to freeze and bank eggs for later use—may affect the medical care egg providers receive. This paper ultimately addresses the ethical quandaries that arise in a medical practice where patients are also products.

Author

• Diane Tober, University of California, San Francisco