Showing posts with label ivf. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ivf. Show all posts

Monday, April 18, 2016

Pay-for-Eggs Legislation Up Again in California: Fertility Industry Trying to Repeal Ban on Compensation for Human Eggs in Research

The industry that deals in human eggs is once again pushing forward with California legislation to allow it to pay women thousands of dollars to harvest their eggs for research purposes.

The measure (AB2531) by Assemblywoman Autumn Burke, D-Inglewood, is now on the Assembly floor after clearing the Assembly Health Committee on a 17-0 vote. (See the March 31 legislative analysis of the measure here.)

The bill is essentially the same as the one vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2013. It is not clear whether the current author of the measure has been successful in removing Brown’s opposition.

The legislation is sponsored by American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the dominant trade group in the largely unregulated fertility industry.

When she introduced her bill in February, Burke said in a press release,
Autumn Burke on Assembly floor
Sacramento Bee photo
"It's perfectly legal for a woman to get paid when advertising through Craigslist to provide eggs for infertile couples, but she can't get paid for a donation in medical research. It's insulting to women, and it keeps California's research institutions in the dark ages. Instead of leading the way on women's health, we're stuck behind 47 other states all because of a misguided ban that assumes women shouldn't be allowed to make their own decisions."
Burke and the industry organization have an array of groups backing the legislation, ranging from California's district nine of  the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to California Cryobank.

The bill is opposed by the Center for Genetics and Society in Berkeley along with groups ranging from the Catholic church to "We Are Egg Donors."

Marcy Darnovsky, NBC photo
Earlier this month, Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, wrote:
"The health risks of egg harvesting are significant, but they’re woefully under-studied. A well-known and fairly common short-term problem is ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome (OHSS), but no one is sure how many women get the serious – sometimes life-threatening – version of it. Data on long-term outcomes, including follow-up studies on reports of cancers and infertility in egg providers, are notoriously inadequate.
"It is impossible for women to give truly informed consent if adequate health and safety information can’t be provided.
"Offering large sums of money encourages women in need to gamble with their health. It’s what bioethicists call 'undue inducement.'"
California's $3 billion stem cell agency bans compensation for women who provide eggs for research that the agency finances but it does allow reimbursement of expenses. The legislation would repeal a state law banning compensation.

(Editor's note: The original version of this story said that Brown vetoed an egg compensation bill last year instead of 2013.)

Friday, July 19, 2013

Paying for Human Eggs, Ivan Illich and Jerry Brown

California's pay-for-eggs bill is stalled in a technical parliamentary process as opponents continue to wage their campaign urging Gov. Jerry Brown to veto the proposal, which swept easily through the legislature.

The latest volley against the industry-sponsored measure appeared this week as an op-ed in The Sacramento Bee. The legislation would allow women to be paid for eggs for scientific research. The op-ed piece invoked the philosopher Ivan Illich, a longtime friend of Jerry Brown and much respected by him.

The July 16 article was written by Diane Tober of the Center for Genetics and Society of Berkeley and Nancy Scheper-Hughes, a professor of medical anthropology at UC Berkeley and director of Organs Watch, a medical human rights documentation project.The piece said, 
“The late historian of science and technology, Ivan Illich, warned against the processes of medical industries which 'create new needs and control their satisfaction and turn human beings and their creativity into objects.'"
The op-ed said,
“Women's research eggs (have) become the hot new bio-product, increasing the profits of the multibillion-dollar-per-year infertility industry at the expense of women's health, safety and possibly, their future fertility. Is this the 'equity' we want for ourselves, our sisters and our daughters?”
In 2003, Brown wrote a remembrance of Illich, whom he first met in 1976. Brown said that Illich
“...bore witness to the destructive power of modern institutions that 'create needs faster than they can create satisfaction, and in the process of trying to meet the needs they generate, they consume the earth.'”
The egg compensation bill (AB926 by Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord) would remove a ban in California on paying women who provide their eggs for scientific research. Currently women who provide eggs for fertility purposes can be paid, sometimes as much as $50,000, depending on the characteristics of the woman providing the eggs. The bill would not alter the ban on using research funds from the California stem cell agency to pay for eggs. However, the agency next week will consider a proposal to allow use of agency funds to purchase stem cell lines derived from eggs through compensation. (For more information on the bill, see here, here and here.)

The egg bill received final legislative approval on July 1. The governor has 12 days to act on the measure once it actually reaches his desk. However, as of this morning, the legislation remained in what is known as the “engrossing and enrolling” process. It could be a routine delay but the process can also be used to manage the flow of legislation to the governor. Brown is currently on a two-week trip to Germany and Ireland and is not expected to return until near the first of August.

(An earlier version of this item incorrectly identified Nancy Scheper-Hughes as with the Center for Genetics and Society.)

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