Young Women’s Eggs: Elite and Ordinary

My college-age daughter can earn $50,000-$100,000 just for being smart, beautiful, tall, and a Harvard student.  Yes, going to Harvard could actually pay off, even sooner than we might have imagined.  $100,000 would go a long way toward paying her tuition and fees, a fact that she has pointed out to me many times.  And all she would have to do is “donate” her eggs to an infertile couple willing to pay.

“Donate” is quite a misnomer.  Young women are getting paid handsomely, though there is outrageous discrepancy between what are considered “elite” and more ordinary eggs.  At the University of Oregon, where I teach, advertisements frequently appear in the student newspaper offering only $5000 for my students’ eggs.  Still, many are tempted.  I worry that young women are being unfairly lured by these exorbitant sums (even $5000 is a lot to a college student at a public university) to sign on to something that we can’t really be sure is safe in the long run. 

One danger is ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), a potentially harmful condition caused by the...