Donating is not always a good thing
About a year ago I came home and saw a form on the kitchen table. It was an egg donation form that my sister was in the process of filling out. All that I could think about was that movie Loser (2000), with Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari. In that movie, Jason's character warns about cancer that can occur from egg donation. I never knew if it was true or not until I read this article from TIME magazine.
Most women who think seriously about donating and even the ones who already have donated have no idea about long term side effects from this procedure. This is partly to blame on the lack of long term studies being done and the lack of some sort of registry to track donors after the procedure. There have been stories of infertility and even one woman got colon cancer. The infertility would seem more plausible because of the hormone treatments you have to go though to create more mature eggs for extraction, but the colon cancer case is harder to figure out if it really was due to the donation. Of course, this case was swept under the rug in the end.
Some of the short-term effects are ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, ovarian torsion or ruptured ovarian cysts. Most women get a mild or moderate form of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, which involves discomfort, bloating or nausea and usually goes away on its own. The more serious form of this affects 100-200 women out of 100,000 and can lead to kidney failure and death.
Many women turn to this because you can get up to $5,000 dollars for 1 donation, and an individual can donate up to 6 times in their life. It's great to get paid, but is it really worth it to cause harm to your own body?
-Katie Cyr (week 8, group B)
posted by PWH @ 11:50 PM
14 comments
14 Comments:
Interesting. Are there medications involved prior to donation (like estrogen flushing or progesterone inhibitors) that may increase the chances of adverse reaction after the fact?
[Nathan Beck, Group A]
So many women do this from day to day. There have to be more studies going on to give some sort of percentage of risk to go along with egg donation. I feel like if that were to happen less women would donate or maybe the compensation would increase? I wonder what the stats are of women who donate and get cancer.
Crystal Cabral
so many women why is there not more information. Was this swept under the rug because the more women who come forward with cancer the less women that will donate. If it is being swept under the rug that's really sad, women should know about what they are doing to their bodies. Who would have thought a movie titled Loser would have actually taught something like cancer risk from donating eggs.
Samantha DeBiasio
Katie,
This is scary! I always see ads in the paper to donate eggs for a lot of money, and I find it a bit bizarre, personally. But being in the paper going around campus where most students need money, women are going to do it! A small warning would probably cut the amount of women who donate drastically. Giving one egg for $5,000 seemed too good to be true anyhow.
Sarah Bello
Very interesting article. I don't know why anyone would want to get rid of an egg anyways, I mean its not like theres an unlimited number of them. Were learning a lot about the female reproductive cycle and hormone levels and this seems like taking hormones and then removing an egg can cause a lot of trauma to this system. Why are studies on this so scarce?
[Emily Bell]
Wow interesting. I wonder what sort of regulations, if any, they have for donating eggs? Did they speculate on the cause of the colon cancer? It seems like a very risky thing to do. I hope your sister didn't go through with it. Eventhough $5000 is a lot of money it doesn't seem worrht it to risk your health in such a way.
-Alex Pavidapha
I never realized there were any risks in donating eggs. I figured it was just a simple procedure with little real effect on the patient. What exactly about the procedure causes any of these symptoms? Or is this something they are still looking into?
-Conor Stenerson
Very interesting article! It is crazy how much money they offer you for egg donation. I think more long term studies should be done on this so, in the future we can learn if it really is worth the risk.
- Maura Mulvey
Wow. I did not realize the amount of effects that come from donating your eggs. This article is very informing. I am pretty sure many young women do not know of the effects of donating their eggs. Now that I know more, I will be researching this topic more and spreading the word to the women I know.
Shonneau L.
Nice article, how do they actually go about extracting the egg that makes it so disruptive and harmful to the body?
Nicholas Skvir
21798087
Hey Katie,
This is a very interesting blog. The 5000$ amount seems like a compelling reason to undergo this procedure. Also, have there been any accounts of infertility as a side affect of this procedure. On the other hand, are there negative side affects for sperm donators?
Saad Choudhry
This is really neat. Do you think within time it will be safer for women to donate eggs? This was the first I've heard of it being harmful to donate eggs. Can you explain the process of how they take the eggs? I will as the same question Saad did, what about sperm donations?
-Alyson Paige
The advertising for this is everywhere, so a lot of women are drawn to the thought of donating for the money they get in return. The ads fail to tell you that you need to take countless hormones, see a doctor a whole lot, and have some weight gain and terrible side effects.
~Alyssa Terestre
Pretty interesting article..Do you know if there are specifc treatments for the effects of donation?..For example hormone treatments?
-Julio Rodriguez
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