Egg Donors Often Recruited Unethically, Study Finds

Many agencies and clinics that use websites to recruit women to donate their eggs to those with fertility problems do not follow ethical guidelines, a new study says.

One-third of the websites examined in the study paid donors more for having presumably desirable traits, and more than half omitted the procedures' potential risks.

Among websites that mentioned specific donor traits, 64 percent said they paid more to women who had successfully donated eggs in the past, meaning the provided eggs resulted in a birth.

"Recipients often request to be matched to a 'proven' egg donor although there is no evidence that they are better gamete donors than women who have not previously donated or provided a success," said study researcher Dr. Mark Sauer, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University Medical Center.

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