Paving the Way to Exploit Poor Women for Their Eggs

The calls are growing to open the door to markets in human eggs. The Telegraph has reported that Dr David Adamson, the president-elect of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, has called for opening the doors wide to purchasing eggs for use in IVF. Eggs are also needed for each effort at human cloning, and the calls are being heard to permit biotechnologists to buy eggs.

So, this is the situation. If people like Dr. Adamson get their way, poor women are going to be enticed—and some already are being enticed—to risk their health, their fertility, and in a few cases, even their lives to help rich parents with fertility problems give birth and/or to facilitate human cloning in which Big Biotech hopes to make a bonanza on the technology.

If we ever get to the point that we need millions of eggs, rather than just thousands, it could spark a neo colonialism in which biotech companies exploit the world’s poorest women for their body parts. We should do all we can to prevent poor women from becoming mere commodities.