Controversial plans allowing women to donate eggs for research in return for money are expected to be approved by the government's fertility regulator today. Under the scheme women who donate eggs will receive up to £250 compensation for lost earnings, with further uncapped payments available to cover travel costs and childcare.
The fresh eggs will be used to bolster limited supplies provided by fertility clinics to scientists who use them to create cloned embryos. Stem cells harvested from the embryos are expected to provide unprecedented insights into medical conditions such as Parkinson's and motor neurone disease.
The proposal has outraged some groups who believe hormonal treatments used to stimulate women's ovaries to produce eggs may be too risky to justify altruistic egg donation. In a small percentage of cases women receiving IVF treatment develop ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, which in extremely rare cases can be fatal.
The groups also fear some women may feel pressured into donating eggs either for financial reasons or by relatives suffering from conditions that stand to benefit from stem cell research in the future. Although embryonic stem cells hold great promise for revolutionary new medical treatments scientists have so far failed to extract the cells from cloned embryos, which are particularly desirable because they can be genetically matched to a patient and could be used without fear of immune rejection. The official decision follows a six-month public consultation by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which has already granted a licence to a fertility clinic in Newcastle allowing women to donate eggs for research. If the proposal is turned down the licence given to Alison Murdoch at the Newcastle Centre for Life will be revoked, an HFEA spokeswoman said.
In Britain it is illegal to offer payments to egg donors, but expenses can be reimbursed and fertility clinics are allowed to offer discounted IVF treatment to women if they give some of their eggs to other couples. In the US it is legal for women to sell their eggs, with some fertility clinics offering up to $10,000. One recent study found many women sold their eggs to pay off credit card bills.
Egg donation is not unprecedented in Britain. In 1984 a team led by Peter Braude at King's College London extracted eggs from consenting women by administering egg-producing drugs during operations to sterilise them.
Prof Braude, who chairs the scientific advisory committee at the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, said the risk of a woman developing OHSS was "vanishingly small" before they received an injection given late in the procedure, and an ultrasound scan at this stage reveals which patients are at risk.
"You can tell if there is a chance she will develop OHSS, and if there is you can stop the treatment there. She won't get OHSS and you won't get your eggs," he said.
Lord Winston, the Hammersmith hospital fertility specialist questioned why the HFEA was ruling on the matter, adding: "If women want to donate eggs altruistically, why shouldn't they, as long as you can ensure they are not under any pressure to do so."
David King, of the pressure group Human Genetics Alert, criticised the HFEA for "rewriting the rules" on medical ethics. "The risks involved in egg donation are far too great to be allowed in basic research, with no direct benefit to the volunteer. The researchers can already obtain eggs ethically, but their rapacious demands for even more eggs arise because cloning is so inefficient," he said.
Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, added: "The HFEA has a duty to the health and welfare of patients, but it now seems much more concerned with providing human tissue for the biotechnology lobby."
