$3B Fertility Industry the Wild West of U.S. Medicine
By Justine Griffin,
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
| 05. 25. 2014
Editor's note: Inspired to act by a childhood loss, Sarasota Herald-Tribune staff writer Justine Griffin became an egg donor and eventually helped a couple in Ireland have a baby. This is an excerpt of her story and tough lessons she learned about a donor's worth once her contract was fulfilled. To read the entire version of Griffin's story and watch a video diary of her journey, go to costoflife.heraldtribune.com. Griffin donated her eggs for personal reasons, not as a Halifax Media Group employee. All doctors and agency staff were aware she was writing the story.
I have always been the wimp in my family, the first to cry or complain at any sign of pain or discomfort.
My parents and younger brother have taken great pleasure in re-enacting all my greatest "near-death" experiences and illnesses at the dinner table over the years. Like the time I fell off the back of a golf cart and was convinced I'd broken my collar bone. (I didn't.)
Or the time I thought I had meningitis. (It was just a cold.)
So the idea...
Related Articles
By Grace Won, KQED [with CGS' Katie Hasson] | 12.02.2025
In the U.S., it’s illegal to edit genes in human embryos with the intention of creating a genetically engineered baby. But according to the Wall Street Journal, Bay Area startups are focused on just that. It wouldn’t be the first...
Several recent Biopolitical Times posts (1, 2, 3, 4) have called attention to the alarmingly rapid commercialization of “designer baby” technologies: polygenic embryo screening (especially its use to purportedly screen for traits like intelligence), in vitro gametogenesis (lab-made eggs and sperm), and heritable genome editing (also termed embryo editing or reproductive gene editing). Those three, together with artificial wombs, have been dubbed the “Gattaca stack” by Brian Armstrong, CEO of the cryptocurrency company...
By Lucy Tu, The Guardian | 11.05.2025
Beth Schafer lay in a hospital bed, bracing for the birth of her son. The first contractions rippled through her body before she felt remotely ready. She knew, with a mother’s pit-of-the-stomach intuition, that her baby was not ready either...
By Emily Glazer, Katherine Long, Amy Dockser Marcus, The Wall Street Journal | 11.08.2025
For months, a small company in San Francisco has been pursuing a secretive project: the birth of a genetically engineered baby.
Backed by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and his husband, along with Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong, the startup—called...