HUMAN EGG PROVIDER PROJECT
“...Dr. Jacques Testart...believed that in ten years there would be an epidemic of premature menopause and reproductive cancers caused by (fertility) drugs....I asked why he and other scientists were continuing their work despite these concerns. Testart’s answer was chilling: ‘Because...we are learning a lot about conception and contraception, and that is the important thing.”
(Figure from R. Steinbrook, N. Engl. J. Med. 2006; 354:324-326)
Why do bio-entrepreneurs want access to women’s eggs? Pressures on young women to grant access to their eggs are increasing. Women’s eggs are raw material for research on and genetic manipulation of human embryos.
What is involved in harvesting a woman’s eggs? Women undergoing egg retrieval undertake real yet poorly studied health risks. To retrieve her eggs, a woman first takes one set of powerful synthetic hormones to shut down her ovaries, then another to hyperstimulate them to induce a yield of eggs many times the normal number. Whether this is done as part of her own fertility treatment, or to donate eggs to another woman, or for medical research, the process is the same.
What are known health risks associated with egg retrieval?
Vaginal, intra-abdominal, and intestinal bleeding
Post-anesthesia pain
Ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome, mild to severe:
-- bloating, nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath
-- blood clots
-- organ failure
-- death
Infertility
Possible ovarian and other cancers
How are women’s eggs harvested?
A woman must inject herself daily with hormones for one to three weeks. These hormones stimulate the growth of ovarian follicles, suppress ovulation, and promote egg maturation. When the eggs are ready the woman is brought into surgery, given intravenous sedation, and a trans-vaginal probe is inserted into her vagina. A hollow needle emerges from the probe, pierces the back of the vagina and is pushed into the ovary, where the eggs are sucked out of each follicle one by one. Where women naturally produce one egg a month, a woman undergoing this procedure typically produces at least a dozen eggs, although reports of harvesting many more than that are not unusual.
How can women get better information about health risks associated with providing eggs? AHB joins other groups calling for more and better studies of egg donor risks so that women may be offered a meaningful informed consent before agreeing to have their ovaries hyperstimulated and their eggs retrieved. AHB calls for a national registry to track the health and well-being of women donating eggs, the prohibition of payment for egg donation, and a moratorium on egg donation for research until the long-term health risks are better understood:
SIGN HUMAN EGG PROVIDER PETITION
For more information:
Visit We Are Egg Donors website
Tober, Diane, et al, Egg donor self-reports of ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome:
Twelve percent of the 289 U.S. egg donors who participated in the study experienced severe OHSS that required paracentesis. An additional 1.58% had criticall OHSS and were hospitalized for up to a week due to complications.
Visit Egg Donor Research Website
Risking Women’s Health, While Widening the Door to Techno-Eugenics
CONSIDER THESE WOMEN who have suffered serious health consequences or death after having their ovaries stimulated using synthetic hormones.
View videos
For additional information see:
Trapped in the Surrogacy Boom: Thai Women Rescued from Human Egg Farms in Georgia February 18, 2025
The ‘Wild, Wild West’ of the American Egg Donor Industry,” The Free Press, Dec 2, 2024
Stories: What Egg Donors Want Intended Parents to Know
See, “I’m deeply concerned about how the United States treats egg donors,” by Sierra Falter Poulson, CoFounder, We Are Egg Donors.
Schneider, Jennifer, MD, PhD, Fatal colon cancer in a young egg donor: A physician mother’s call for follow-up and research on the long-term risks of ovarian stimulation
Visit Egg Donor Research Website
Risking Women’s Health, While Widening the Door to Techno-Eugenics, Tina Stevens, Stuart Newman, CounterPunch, September 26, 2019
Stevens and Newman, Biotech Juggernaut: Hope, Hype, and Hidden Agendas of Entrepreneurial BioScience, (Routledge 2019).
Diane Beeson, Ph.D., "Dangerous Harvest," Gene Watch
Durrell, Justine. "Women's Eggs: Exceptional Endings," Hastings Women’s Law Journal, January 2011.
Tina Stevens and Diane Beeson, Selling Eggs: The Untold Risks of Donation and Fertility Treatments and Need for Tracking
In October 2009, California passed the nation's first law requiring egg broker ads to reference the existence of health risks associated with egg donation, AB 1317.
OurBodies, Ourselves webpage on egg extraction
Lupron:
Lupron is one of the drugs used frequently in fertility clinics as part of the egg harvesting process even though it was never approved by the FDA for that purpose. It has caused thousands of adverse health consequences.
For more information, visit the Lupron Victim's Hub.