A recent news story in the pages of Global Times really caught my attention. It dealt with young women having the opportunity to earn tens of thousands of yuan by illegally becoming human egg donors, especially if they are good looking or go to a top university. To the lawyer in me, the story really set off alarm bells.
This is hardly the golden egg that brokers sell to the girls. It's unregulated behavior that has profound implications and consequences for the donor, the recipient and for today's China, where one in 10 women has a fertility problem.
I got the distinct feeling that the hundreds of brokers, asking these young women to put all their eggs in one broker's basket, are the only clear winners. They can take the money and run, leaving the others to pick up what potentially can amount to a lifetime or multiple potential lifetimes of complications and troubles.
What's ironic is that China does stringently regulate sperm donations and in-vitro fertilization but has yet to control egg donation. The result is that there is a wild west-style unregulated marketplace potentially placing the egg donor and the recipients in harm's way for the sake of a few extra yuan.
But China doesn't have to reinvent the wheel. It can examine the experiences of other countries. Even though modern reproductive technologies have only two generations of experience, there is a history of trial and error learning from many other countries.
In my country, the US, there isn't much national direct guidance for egg donations. Rather, the individual states are the primary regulators, often following guidance from medical associations such as the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. New York state, however offers some good guidance that policymakers would be well to study.
Merely harvesting the eggs, no piece of cake and certainly far from a psychologically and medically risk-free situation that some agents claim, is a middle stage in the process. Before undergoing a procedure in which deaths and serious injuries have occurred, there are a whole series of tests for diseases like gonorrhea, Chlamydia, syphilis, as well as hepatitis B and C. Donors and their sexual partners must be tested for HIV/AIDS within 30 days before the donation. Then there are genetic disease screenings, as well as questionnaires about mental health and family medical histories.
These tests all cost money. Knowing the way today's China works, I'm sure that anyone on this gravy train of fat fees and easy money would not fork out for such expensive care unless actively forced to do so by the threat of large fines and severe criminal punishments. China's underdeveloped civil system can't handle the situation.
And what about all the unanswered ethical questions? Who is the legal mother? Should the donor or the child know anything about each other, even their medical histories? What if the child became a pop star and makes gazillions of yuan? Does the donor have any claim to part of the loot?
In most American states, under the Uniform Parentage Act the egg recipient is given complete parental responsibility for the conceived child, and the father is treated as if he were the natural father. To make certain, however, a detailed contract is signed by both the donor and the recipient acknowledging these rights, and other rights and responsibilities. Most donors see their own lawyer, as opposed to the broker's lawyer who has a classic case of conflict of interest.
Many states limit the number of eggs that can be donated to prevent serious genetic consequences in the unlikely but possible event that two people who do not know that they are siblings meet, fall in love, marry and conceive.
Most jurisdictions, however are much more generous that China in those regulated cases of in-vitro fertilization where only five offspring can be produced.
It is little wonder here that desperate recipients have to wait a year or two to avail themselves of relatively rare legally harvested eggs often look to the black market.
I gave a speech once citing the 10 rules of doing business in China. I admonished the audience that in China many things are prohibited but all things are possible. When dealing with profound of questions of human life, the legal and regulatory limbo in which egg donors and recipients find themselves urgently needs a timely, clear and enforced legal remedy.
The author is a former director and vice president at ABC Television. hdzodin@hotmail.com