CGS-authored

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/magazine/26letters-t-1.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

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.

Assisted Reproduction