iOS app Android app More  Jacob M. Appel   Sexism and the Price
of Eggs  Posted: 03/31/10 09:07 PM ET  While the sale of solid
organs has been illegal in the United States since 1984,
compensation for sperm and eggs has been permitted under the
guise of compensating "donors" for the time, exertion and risk
entailed in the harvesting process. No legislation yet places
any specific limits on such remuneration. However, the American
Society for Reproductive Medicine rather arbitrarily established
voluntary guidelines in 2007 that cap payments to egg "donors"
at $5,000 generally and at $10,000 with "justification." That
Alabama-based professional organization's code also prohibits
payments based upon attributes of the donor--such as ethnicity,
height or SAT score. Failure to follow these principles denies
fertility clinics and physicians the ethical imprimatur of the
ASRM, and the policy implicitly suggests that offering larger
sums for ova is inappropriate. Now a study conducted by Aaron D.
Levine, a leading bio