"Eggsploitation: Maggie's Story" Reveals Unknown Risks of Egg Retrieval
Eggsploitation: Maggie’s Story is the fourth in a series of original documentaries about assisted reproduction directed by Jennifer Lahl, president and founder of the Center for Bioethics and Culture (CBC). The 22-minute short film functions as a sort of sequel to Eggsploitation, released in 2010 and re-released in an expanded version in 2013. Lahl has also directed two other films about donor-conceived people: Breeders: A Subclass of Women? (2014) and Anonymous Father’s Day (2011). While some of CBC’s staff hold conservative views, its film series focuses squarely on concerns about the fertility industry that many reproductive rights and justice advocates share.
Maggie was diagnosed with Stage IV Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, a breast cancer, at the age of 32. Her risk factors were minimal: she was young, healthy, had never had children, and had no family history of cancer. But Maggie had undergone egg retrieval ten times in as many years because, she said, she wanted “to help people.” She now believes that these procedures caused her cancer.
At the time, Maggie was excited to have her eggs “chosen” by an infertile couple. But over the course of the decade, she gradually became “uncomfortable” with the fertility industry. One turning point came when a nurse urged Maggie to demand more money for her eggs, because of “what you’re going through and how many times he [the fertility doctor] has used you and everything he’s gotten from you.” When a second fertility clinic recruited her because of her previous successful egg retrievals, she felt it was a bit odd. She became more suspicious when a fertility clinic discovered a lump in her breast, but then declared it to merely a cyst. Months later, a doctor unaffiliated with the fertility industry diagnosed her Stage IV breast cancer. Looking back, she notes that one of the fertility clinics also excised precancerous cells from her cervix, but didn’t mention the association between hormone treatments and cancer.
Like many other women who provide eggs for other people’s fertility treatments, Maggie didn’t know that long-term studies of the effects of egg extraction are lacking, and that therefore caution should prevail. We do know, however, that short-term risks include ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), with symptoms including abdominal pain, vomiting, and shortness of breath . Other risks include infection, damage to ovaries, infertility, and of course breast, ovarian, or endometrial cancers. Studies about the incidence of these problems have found widely varying rates.
In addition to the disturbing inadequacy of research about egg retrieval, there is also a dearth of regulation of the fertility industry. That fertility clinics performed ten egg retrieval procedures in Maggie’s case is an example of the consequences. While the fertility industry’s own professional organizations – the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) and the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technologies (SART) – recommend no more than six cycles of hormonal treatment for IVF and/or egg retrieval, Maggie nonetheless underwent ten.
Is Maggie’s experience an outlier? How many other egg providers have stories similar to hers? How many contract cancer, and how do those rates compare to women who haven’t had their eggs harvested? Until we have better research, tracking, and regulation of egg provision and the fertility industry as a whole, these important questions will remain dangerously unanswered.
Previously on Biopolitical Times: