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Somebody e-mailing female students with Chinese surnames at MIT looking for their eggs
By adamg on Thu, 02/18/2021 - 10:28am
The Tech reports and condemns e-mail from somebody claiming he will pay $50,000 to female students with certain Chinese surnames if they give up some of their eggs - about five times the going rate for them and without any mention of the potentially serious complications (like, oh, death) for women who get hormone shots to stimulate extra egg production for harvesting.
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Comments
The Tech is probably upset
The Tech is probably upset that they are emailing students directly, instead of running paid advertisements for sperm/egg donors in The Tech/Crimson like back in the good ol' days.
This is a really bad
This is a really bad predatory practice, and I'm glad The Tech is condemming these emails. I remember our college newspaper back in the day ran ads from companies soliciting eggs from young women. It was super gross.
But as someone who has been through multiple rounds of IVF, while egg retrieval sucks and is NOT FUN, the editorial is exaggerating the ramifications of OHSS a bit. I've had OHSS and it truly sucked and I was very uncomfortable, but in general OHSS is rarely life threatening. According to this 2012 journal article, OHSS happens in 1-2% of cases and of those cases the mortality risk is 1 in 450000 to 500000 cases.
I want to be clear--I'm not denying that these emails are extremely unethical. I think anyone considering egg retrievals should know *all* the facts, drugs you have to take, and risks involved. However, I'm not sure you can equate egg retrieval with something that is life threatening when that is so rarely the case.
So a conservative estimate is
So a conservative estimate is that death from OHSS happens in 1 out of 22.5 million egg retrievals (2% times 1:450,000, or .000004%). This doesn't seem like the riskiest activity promoted by email.
How is it predatory? A
How is it predatory? A female Harvard student should "know" that the reason their eggs are worth $50,000 (while a guy's sperm is worth $50) is because the donation process is invasive and uncomfortable. They can also be expected to research and learn the side effects before signing the contract and starting the medical procedures. It's not like they'll swipe right on the email and instantly get whisked away to a fertility center.
That same female student can conceivably also save and freeze one of her own eggs, at the same time, for her own use later in life. That can be life-changing if twenty years later she finds herself ready to start a family, but unable to conceive.
Mars...Needs...Women...
n/t
Grogu
That you?
At $50,000 an egg
Human Caviar is the ultimate luxury food.
How is this any of our
How is this any of our business?
Because we live in a society.
Because we live in a society.
Because it is creepy and intrusive
And pretty much an unwanted advance to exploit sexuality.
It is one thing to place an ad - quite another to spam university e-mail accounts.
One could argue
Much of what is "news" might not be any of our business.
For example, 95% of what the Karadashians do is none of our business, yet there was an entire TV franchise dedicated to them, along with much ink spilled in the tabloids about them.
As it is, I think this is interesting, though as others note, the idea that egg donation runs a notable risk of death is as laughable as one targeting a particular surname for egg donation.
Well then
When will you be signing up to donate your eggs?
I guess when you chose not to have an abortion for a pregnancy that could kill you. Sure.
The uhub discussion of this
The uhub discussion of this issue from 2017 identified the person who placed the ads. It's worth reading.
Read the last paragraph....
Seems to me that the authors don't mind if people seeking egg donors advertise in the MIT paper or even ask for MIT students or graduates specifically for their eggs.
They just don't want random people doing it (they want "credible agencies or clinics"), and they don't want you to say why you want an MIT grad or who specifically (ethnic group) you want the eggs from.