I read a couple of egg donor blogs today.
Apparently, the UK prohibits egg donors from being paid, and then some infertile couple ends up in the paper just pleading for an egg donor to help them out -- as though other people's eggs are necessary in the way that a donor kidney might be.
Of course, I take a bit of a libertarian view on the matter -- if our bodies are our own, I think we should pretty much be able to sell them (with caveats against exploiting destitute people, and perhaps legally mandated minimums, sort of like a minimum wage for biological components).
But even if your view is more moderate, surely one wouldn't expect (very many) egg donors to endure some-odd ten weeks of drugs, injections, specifically-timed doctor visits, egg retrieval under general anesthesia, and lost income during this period out of sheer altruism. While I could see doing such a thing for, say, one's own sister, I would kind of wonder about the mental health (or potential martyr complex?) of anyone who volunteered to do such a thing for a stranger -- what is it that this person really wants back? I think you might be getting some crazy-lady genes for your baby. How nice!
Interestingly, when I asked the egg agency how the egg donor fee should be reported tax-wise, I was told it was a (tax-free) "pain and suffering" payment, the same as if someone had hit me with their car and I had won a lawsuit against him or her.
I also came across a mention (on a "happily child-free" blog) of egg donors who have no interest in children prior to egg donation, but who develop an interest afterwards, perhaps due to the hormonal shifts inherent in the egg donation process (or just due to spending so much time thinking about babies).
Incidentally, I am back in my agency's egg donor database. They asked me to log in and view my profile -- it's sort of like a dating site for parents and donors! -- and I discovered that someone had listed my IQ at 140 or 150 or something.
I have never had my IQ tested formally, but last time I took an IQ test on my own, I scored freaky-high because I am a standardized test-prep teacher and an IQ test looks disturbingly like an SAT, with the addition of some little patterned boxes you have to rotate (and if I spent some time, I'm sure I could think of a near-foolproof method for boosting students' scores on that as well). I don't think that much of IQ tests. In any case, the egg agency said the value probably got filled in when they were switching to new software.
The writer of this one blog was joking about how big your follicles (the pockets in the ovaries that hold each individual egg) get when stimulated -- so big....
...that they beep when I back up?
...that they have their own zip code?
This is humor for a very small audience (with very large ovaries).
Apparently, the UK prohibits egg donors from being paid, and then some infertile couple ends up in the paper just pleading for an egg donor to help them out -- as though other people's eggs are necessary in the way that a donor kidney might be.
Of course, I take a bit of a libertarian view on the matter -- if our bodies are our own, I think we should pretty much be able to sell them (with caveats against exploiting destitute people, and perhaps legally mandated minimums, sort of like a minimum wage for biological components).
But even if your view is more moderate, surely one wouldn't expect (very many) egg donors to endure some-odd ten weeks of drugs, injections, specifically-timed doctor visits, egg retrieval under general anesthesia, and lost income during this period out of sheer altruism. While I could see doing such a thing for, say, one's own sister, I would kind of wonder about the mental health (or potential martyr complex?) of anyone who volunteered to do such a thing for a stranger -- what is it that this person really wants back? I think you might be getting some crazy-lady genes for your baby. How nice!
Interestingly, when I asked the egg agency how the egg donor fee should be reported tax-wise, I was told it was a (tax-free) "pain and suffering" payment, the same as if someone had hit me with their car and I had won a lawsuit against him or her.
I also came across a mention (on a "happily child-free" blog) of egg donors who have no interest in children prior to egg donation, but who develop an interest afterwards, perhaps due to the hormonal shifts inherent in the egg donation process (or just due to spending so much time thinking about babies).
Incidentally, I am back in my agency's egg donor database. They asked me to log in and view my profile -- it's sort of like a dating site for parents and donors! -- and I discovered that someone had listed my IQ at 140 or 150 or something.
I have never had my IQ tested formally, but last time I took an IQ test on my own, I scored freaky-high because I am a standardized test-prep teacher and an IQ test looks disturbingly like an SAT, with the addition of some little patterned boxes you have to rotate (and if I spent some time, I'm sure I could think of a near-foolproof method for boosting students' scores on that as well). I don't think that much of IQ tests. In any case, the egg agency said the value probably got filled in when they were switching to new software.
The writer of this one blog was joking about how big your follicles (the pockets in the ovaries that hold each individual egg) get when stimulated -- so big....
...that they beep when I back up?
...that they have their own zip code?
This is humor for a very small audience (with very large ovaries).
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The way I look at the issue of giving up my "potential children" -- those people are going to have kids with or without me, so they might as well use my genes, because my genes are awesome. Any klids that result are in addition to, not instead of, my own kids, so in the end, I've spread my seed more, which is kind of the point of Darwinism, etc.