Human egg raffle - should a child be the ultimate prize?

A London IVF clinic has sparked controversy this week by offering childless couples the chance to win an American donor egg of their choice.

Paying egg donors for their eggs is illegal in the UK, but the clinic is offering the winner free treatment in America to sidestep existing European laws. The winner also gets to select an egg based on race, upbringing and education, even being able to look at photographs of donors as children to pick which they like the look of.

There’s currently long waiting lists for donor eggs in the UK thanks to a huge shortage of women willing to donate. It’s something we are actively campaigning on, through our dedicated donor sperm and egg site www.manchesterdonors.com. But in the USA, where women get handsomely paid for their eggs, there is no such shortage.

If nothing else, this ‘raffle’ for a human egg draws attention to the fact that we need more donors in the UK.

But if you look closely, you’ll see that the egg raffle is nothing more than a tool to promote the clinic’s services. They apparently have a new treatment arrangement with a US clinic, and to enter the raffle you must attend the seminar which promotes their services.

It reminds me of the timeshare scams, where they promised you a ‘prize’ for attending, as long as you gave up two hours of your time to sit through their marketing and sales pitch in the hope you would sign away your hard earned cash.

Exploiting people’s hopes and dreams of a child is wrong. Organisers claim that this is the way it’s done in the USA – that to encourage people to attend their seminars, clinics offer one course of free treatment to one lucky attendee.

Let’s hope that we don’t go down the same path in the UK. I would never want to see a human egg or even sperm for that matter being offered in this way. Nor would I want to see women being given hundreds of pounds for their eggs. The right to a child shouldn’t go to the highest bidder.

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