Altruism, money motivate egg donors: More young women aiding infertile couples

On the 11th floor of the Virginia Mason Medical Tower, in the understated comfort of the waiting room, patients page through Good Housekeeping and subtly check each other out.

Heidi remembers one morning in particular, looking up at the woman sitting on the sofa across the room, who kind of resembled her, and wondering if she was going to be the mother of her child.

Inside the frosted-glass doors of the Ovum Donor Program, everybody wonders.

Heidi, a pretty 31-year-old blonde with blue eyes and a clean medical history, was there to willingly undergo more than a month of blood tests, ultrasounds, injections and, ultimately, an invasive egg retrieval, to anonymously make three happy couples happier.

Other women visit the clinic hopeful that a stranger's young, healthy eggs will give them a baby.

Later, when a man passed Heidi in the hallway, she couldn't help but think it: He could be the father of my child.

"That's when it kind of becomes a mental game, and I just turn it off," said Heidi, adding that she doesn't want children herself. "I've got a lot of pets."

Heidi is one of thousands of young women choosing to donate their eggs to help infertile women have a baby. For infertile couples, it's the last resort in the quest for a child with a biological connection to them.

For the anonymous donor, who participates for myriad reasons — from soft-hearted altruism to paying off credit-card bills — the process ends with a $2,500 check, a bloated abdomen, pain and cramping. They disappear into the background once conception is achieved, having lent their genetic material but forsworn any relationship with their kin.

Egg donation is a growing national trend, popular especially among college students. About 30,000 babies in the United States have been born as a result. What was once a niche in the fertility industry is now a full-fledged market, with all the entrepreneurial trappings.

Business proposition

Newspaper ads and Internet Web sites are devoted to the transaction. For-profit egg brokers and donation agencies offer a pool of young women with an array of physical characteristics to match any couple's. Some donors are becoming shrewd businesswomen, asking top dollar for their high IQs or good looks.

Egg donation has even found its way into mainstream pop culture, as references and plot devices in the TV show "Ally McBeal" and the teen movie "Loser."

The procedure has been in common practice for less than 10 years, so there has been little opportunity for long-term study. There is no conclusive evidence that egg donation affects the donor's own ability to have children, heightens their risk for ovarian cancer or takes an emotional toll.

A woman is born with around a million eggs; each retrieval removes less than a few dozen from the donor.

But most clinics limit the number of times a donor can give, because they admit the risks are unknown. And ethicists question the role money plays in egg donation, and whether it influences donors to downplay potential risks.

But despite any unseemly marketing attached to it, donors, recipients and medical staff regard egg donation as noble and important work.

"It's a wonderful option, and it should be socially acceptable," said Mary Hjelm, coordinator of the Virginia Mason Ovum Donor Program. Hjelm says generosity is the overriding reason most women donate their eggs. The money doesn't hurt, though; it is meant to compensate for time off work and the discomfort of injections and blood draws.

And there is discomfort. Donors can suffer bruising, headaches, fatigue and abdominal pain.

As a veterinarian, Heidi gave vaccine shots to animals all day long, but was chicken about needles herself. When it came time to give herself the daily intramuscular injections of hormones that would make her eggs plump up in preparation for harvesting, she asked her friend to do it.

Heidi's friend, who had been struggling with infertility, was a big reason Heidi became an egg donor. But the friend had shaky hands and no experience with needles; in the end, Heidi drank a glass of wine, closed her eyes and did it herself.

In 1999, U.S. doctors transferred more than 8,000 embryos produced from fresh or frozen donated eggs into the wombs of women, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Resulting babies are not genetically linked to the woman who gives birth but are linked to their fathers, whose sperm is used to fertilize the donor's eggs.

Egg-donor IVF is an expensive procedure, ranging from $12,000 to $25,000 per attempt, with a baby resulting about 40 percent of the time. The cost restricts the donor technology mostly to the affluent.

Although Heidi donated her eggs for selfless reasons, she didn't want her last name published because her parents don't know she's had her eggs harvested three times. "They would cringe," she said.

Egg donation is still seen as taboo, an act that perhaps runs contrary to human instinct. It remains a secret of some donors as well as recipients. Heidi said her parents thought it was crazy, a health risk. She kept it from her boyfriend at the time until she was finished.

"He said, 'So there's little Yous running around?' " Heidi said. "I said, 'Yeah.' "

So what makes a young woman eager to give part of her reproductive capacity to a total stranger?

Sharon Parker is a Seattle egg broker; she recruits, screens and matches egg donors with couples. A typical donor, she says, is an outgoing college student, bright, open-minded, with a 'helper' personality, who probably volunteers and donates blood.

Parker said there are far more women who want to be donors than are accepted. "It's a pretty arduous process," said Parker. "If they're doing this for a quick check, they definitely earn every penny."

Helen, 25, a biologist from New York who is a UW graduate student, donated her eggs four times. She said if not for the experience, her eggs would be "just sitting inside me for the rest of my life, gathering dust."

"I'm not a very giving person," she said. "I don't give money to homeless people. I'm very jaded and I have a set view about people in the world. But I feel like I've been able to profoundly impact some people's lives. This is my own little ball of good."

There is little doubt some women choose to donate eggs for the money. Look on the back pages of most any alternative weekly or college newspaper for the ads: "Egg Donors Needed. Up to $10,000 Compensation!!! Young, Attractive, Healthy, Women ages 20-30. Red/Blonde/Brunette Hair — Blue/Green/Hazel Eyes. Call Now to Apply!"

The Virginia Mason program advertises in the Stranger, Seattle Weekly, UW Daily and in a biweekly Japanese language newspaper to recruit Asian donors, said Hjelm.

"That $2,500 does help with tuition," said Hjelm.

Years ago, ads offering more than $50,000 for the eggs of Ivy League women drew media attention and criticism, but those cases are rare. Guidelines set by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine suggest a ceiling of $5,000. Virginia Mason and other Seattle clinics offer under $3,000.

Web sites offer pages of donor profiles detailing the physical features, SAT scores and favorite books of hundreds of qualified candidates, along with the going price of their eggs.

Hjelm said potential donors are getting more savvy, going online and from clinic to clinic, seeking programs with the best reputations and compensation packages.

Heidi's father, an attorney who only knows about her first donation — which he wasn't happy about — told her to renegotiate. "He said, 'You're educated, you come from a good family, you're getting anesthetized — you should ask for $50,000!' " she said.

The number of women in the Seattle area interested in donating eggs has fallen off recently, said Gretchen Sewall, director of counseling services at the UW donor program. But the trend continues to grow around the country.

Shelley Smith, who runs the Egg Donor Program in Southern California, said she has seen a dramatic increase. Every day, 30 to 40 potential donors call. Every year, her agency arranges 20 percent more donations than the year before. It's stopped advertising.

"People are so desperate," Smith said. "It's very lucrative for people who do what I do."

Medical ethicists concerned

This is one reason why some medical ethicists are concerned. According to a recent paper by the ethics committee of the reproductive-medicine society, financial incentives may act as coercion, hurting the donor's ability to make informed decisions.

Donors run remote risks of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, infection and — although studies have not drawn a clear connection — impaired fertility and a higher risk of ovarian cancer. Donors may dismiss these risks when offered a large check.

"It's a pretty ethically complicated ordeal," said Sewall.

Ethicists also wonder if it is justified to expose young, fertile donors to the risks of an invasive surgical procedure that has clinical benefit only for the older, infertile patient. Some worry egg donation could contribute to a class system of older, educated affluent women having children on the backs of younger, poorer women.

Helen said the money played so little a role that when she left the office after donating the first time, she left the check behind.

"There are a lot of easier ways to make it," said Helen. "Save a few pennies every day. You cheapen yourself if you make life decisions for that amount of money."

Thousands of infertile women are hoping donors continue to give. Mary Lou, 43, is an egg recipient from Portland. She and her husband have two daughters, 3 and 1, who came from donor eggs. Mary Lou and the donor agreed to contact each other after the births.

"I still can't believe people do this," she said, starting to cry. "It's very emotional. I look at my girls and I think, it wouldn't be possible without her."

Sewall has counseled dozens of young women about egg donation. She thinks women should have the right to donate their eggs and said most donors have told her the experience was "fabulous."

But when a young employee of Sewall's wanted to be an egg donor, Sewall begged her not to. "It's just that protective instinct in me," she said. Some young women may still be maturing and learning how to form relationships; Sewall wonders if egg donation is really the best choice for them.

"My favorite donor is one who is married and done having kids. She knows the value in what she's doing; she can relate to the recipient emotionally. I want the college students to be studying and playing sports and working at a coffee stand."

Caitlin Cleary: 206-464-8214 or ccleary@seattletimes.com