Egg Donor Compensation in Spotlight After Antitrust Class-Action Lawsuit Filed Against 3 Reproductive Medical Organizations Alleges Price Fixing

    NEW YORK, NY, May 21, 2011 /24-7PressRelease/ -- An antitrust lawsuit regarding egg donor compensation, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, named the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), Society for Assisted Reproductive Technologies (SART) and a San Francisco-based fertility center as defendant, according to an email that ASRM sent to its membership on May 9, 2011.

The plaintiff, Lindsay Kamakahi, alleged in a class action suit that ASRM has been price-fixing compensations for egg donors, violating the Sherman Antitrust Act, since the organization issued Ethics Committee Guideline on compensation for oocyte donors in 2007.

The Center for Human Reproduction (CHR), a leading fertility center in New York, NY, with one of the largest and most diverse egg donor programs in the U.S., points out that there are a number of crucially important issues in regards to egg donation, often misunderstood by the public:

i. When egg donors receive payments, they are not paid for their eggs; they are paid for time and efforts given to egg donation.
ii. This distinction is crucial: just like it would be unethical and, likely, illegal to make payments for human organs (to be transplanted), so is it unethical, and, likely, illegal, to pay for eggs.
iii. The principal issue to be addressed in this lawsuit, therefore, is not whether defendants potentially price-fixed what should be paid for donor eggs but whether they illegally restricted what can be paid in fair reimbursement for time and efforts extended as an egg donor.
iv. Whether recommendations as to what constitutes appropriate reimbursement for time and efforts qualify as "price fixing" under the Sherman Antitrust Act would appear questionable. Similar authoritative reimbursement recommendations also exist for organ donors, blood donors, participants in clinical trials, etc.

As CHR's Medical Director, Norbert Gleicher, MD, already pointed out in 1984, there are biological and legal analogies between gamete/embryo donation and organ transplantation (Gleicher N. The fetus is a graft, both biologically and legally, Fertility & Sterility 1984;42:824-5). "One has to wonder whether, hidden behind this lawsuit about compensation for egg donors is not the much larger issue of creating an open marketplace for organ donations, widely discussed in legal circles," comments Dr. Gleicher. "The egg donation process, which serves thousands of infertile women so well every year, should not be abused for such purposes."

About CHR
Center for Human Reproduction (http://www.centerforhumanreprod.com/) is a leading infertility center in New York City with world-wide clientele, well recognized for its major clinical research program, which over the years contributed a number of essential breakthroughs to the IVF process. Dr. Gleicher is available for further comments.

# # #