Thursday

New York Will Give You $10,000 Just For Donating Eggs


New York state plans to offer $10,000 to women for donating their eggs. California is expected to follow suit with its own pay-for-egg donation program. The donated eggs will be fertilized to create embryonic stem cells that they will use for research.
This announcement follows a recent lifting of the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research by President Obama in March. The ban was in effect for the entirety of the Bush Administration. The Bush Administration believed that conducting research on live embryos were unethical and the best he could do as President was to impose that ban.
What the Critics are Saying
Critics are of course saying that women's bodies are being used as commodities and money making machines in donating eggs. Well, I guess that happens all the time in things like modeling, pornography, prostitution and now, donating eggs.
But in addition, the women most likely to take part in donating eggs are poor women. Poor women, although they may have issues of conscience may feel pressured in donating eggs to feed themselves and their children. It's a sad state, but donating eggs might become the next welfare for the poor. I can even see men pressuring their wives in donating eggs to help pay the bills.
But women donating eggs for money is not a new thing. It happens all the time in private egg donation banks all around the country. Just like you hear about sperm banks, there are also egg donation banks as well. Egg donation can be a God-send to women who can't produce their own eggs and a woman willing to donate her eggs can be a real blessing for another woman. But for those doing it just for making money, they might as well start a home based business instead.
However, egg donations aren't as easy or as pleasant as sperm donations. Women must take 12-14 days of injections to stimulate eggs for donation. Then the woman donating the eggs have to go through a 40-45 minute surgery to get the eggs out. Donating eggs is not so simple. It's no wonder that most health facilities are short on women's eggs. It's because donating eggs is so darn difficult.
Embryonic stem cells are fertilized human eggs, which means they have technically been conceived. It's done invitro (in a test tube). Because the human element of having sex is taken out, it seems more like a science experiment than life, but pro-life critics of embyonic stem cell research essentially say that you have to kill a live embryo, which is the first (okay technically the second stage) of a developing baby, to create embryonic stem cells.
Then they use the embryonic stem cells to conduct experiments. Pro-life critics of this say they are essentially using little babies as guinea pigs. If you believe life begins at conception, they are basically right. Embryonic stem cells come from conceived embryos, albeit from a test tube, which makes it seem less human, but technically it's not.



2 comments:

  1. For stem cell research we should have more openness in testing and funds availability to the organizations. Stem cell treatments are going play a major role and change way of medical sciences in the near future.

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