Your Gamete, Myself

Peggy Orenstein's article (July 15) about the experiences of women who conceive and bear children using other women's eggs focuses on their frustrations about infertility, their desires for a pregnancy and a child and the difficulty of their decisions. I hope that you will soon give the same sort of sympathetic attention to the women who are providing these eggs. What is it like to undergo the grueling egg-retrieval process in exchange for a check? How thoroughly are these women being informed of the risks they are taking - including, as Orenstein briefly mentions, the possibility of adverse reactions requiring hospitalization and a small chance of death? Are they being told just how inadequate are the existing data about short-term and long-term risks? Who is recruiting them and profiting from the exchange? Orenstein's article concludes with the happiness of an egg-recipient mother-to-be, looking forward to building her family "regardless of whose genes are involved." Until we consider the women who are providing the eggs that carry those genes, that rosy wrap-up seems premature.

Marcy Darnovsky
Oakland, Calif.