Should It Be Legal to Buy Human Eggs?
BILL PRESS, CO-HOST: Tonight, very special egg donor needed. An ad in a Stanford University newspaper offers $100,000 for the eggs of an athletic young woman. Assuming the offer is real, should it be legal?</s>ANNOUNCER: Live from Washington, CROSSFIRE. On the left, Bill Press; on the right, Mary Matalin. In the crossfire, in San Diego, Tom Pinkerton, an egg donation and surrogacy attorney, and in Boston, George Annas, a member of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine Ethics Committee, and professor of health law at Boston University.</s>PRESS: Good evening, welcome to CROSSFIRE. So are you having trouble setting aside enough money for your daughter's tuition? Well, you don't have to worry any longer. If she has the right attributes she can just sell her eggs to the highest bidder. This week a half-page ad in Stanford University's student paper sets a record high: $100,000 for the eggs of a Caucasian college student, preferably with athletic abilities and under 30 years of age. Families 2000, an organization of Christian women which placed the ad, says, they're not kidding. "This ad was placed on behalf of a client who would like to remain anonymous. Therefore, we are unable to disclose the identity of our client, but can confirm that the ad is quite serious." Indeed. According to Families 2000, 250 women have taken the ad seriously enough to volunteer, but the number of volunteers and the price begs the question, is this a good idea in the first place? Is it wrong to put a price tag on something so personal? Mary has the night off tonight, so back by popular demand, tonight's guest host on the right, Tucker Carlson of "The Weekly Standard" -- Tucker.</s>TUCKER CARLSON, GUEST HOST: Mr. Pinkerton, you help people purchase human eggs from donors. Aren't you buying into the premise of slavery, that human beings are merely commodities that can be bought and sold?</s>TOM PINKERTON, EGG DONATION AND SURROGACY ATTORNEY: You know, the idea that because eggs may be commodities, there's a fear that the children that are born from these eggs are going to be commodities, and the data doesn't suggest that at all. In fact, the bottom line is the parents we deal with desperately want to be parents. Infertility is a disease. This is a treatment. And the children are loved once they're born.</s>CARLSON: But so you're admitting -- I think I heard you say that they are in fact commodities just like anything else, just like a new BMW, or a toaster oven, or anything.</s>PINKERTON: Well, there's no distinction in my mind between donating an egg -- excuse me -- donating an egg and selling an egg. Where we have to start off here is liberty, personal procreative liberty. Do we want to limit that? If so, why? The question we have to answer is where's the harm? That's the ethical question I think that has to be addressed here, and those harms I think are there whether the price is $1,000 or $1 million. We want to treat the donors with respect. We want to screen them psychologically and mentally. We want to adequately inform the parents, and once...</s>CARLSON: Well, then...</s>PINKERTON: Go ahead.</s>CARLSON: Well, answer this, then, why shouldn't parents be able to sell their children? I mean, look, let's say I am an infertile woman, I have the disease of infertility, I am in the supermarket and I see a handsome athletic looking 5-year-old who has all the characteristics I admire and I say to his mother, gee, you know, I'll give you a hundred grand for your baby, why shouldn't she be able to sell the child to me, wouldn't that be a cure for the disease of infertility?</s>PINKERTON: You know, trying to compare sperm cells and egg cells to human beings is a little bit farfetched.</s>CARLSON: What do you mean it's farfetched? That's what they become, don't they? I mean, don't -- you're buying eggs because they become human beings, they don't become puppies.</s>PINKERTON: Well, first of all, the eggs are discharged every month by the woman. Maybe we should get a egg rescue committee going together to try to rescue those eggs. I mean, if you're saying they're the same, we don't treat them the same. The laws don't treat them same. They're not an organ under the law. And I say as long as the harm is protected against, you know, all situations, we should let the parties determine the price and that's what we do with our database.</s>PRESS: Professor Annas, there's a lot of talk about this $100,000, but before we get to the price I would like to talk to you about the basic principle involved.</s>GEORGE ANNAS, AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR REPRODUCTIVE MEDICINE: Sure.</s>PRESS: I can go to a blood bank and sell my blood or plasma, I can go to a sperm bank and sell my sperm, I can go to a wig maker and sell my hair. Why shouldn't a woman be able to sell her eggs?</s>ANNAS: Well, blood, sperm, and hair are all renewable. It doesn't make any difference to you whether any of those three things...</s>PRESS: So are eggs. So are eggs every month.</s>ANNAS: Eggs really aren't that renewable. You're born with all your eggs. And more importantly it is not a simple procedure. It's a major medical procedure to take hormonal drugs for three months then undergo a laparscopy (ph), either under anesthesia or not under anesthesia. It is a procedure that puts women at risk, risk of various diseases and possibly the risk of infertility itself. So I don't we can equate, whether you want to buy or sell them, egg sales with selling hair, sperm, or blood. On the other hand, I would be happy to outlaw the sale of sperm if that's the thing that hangs people up. They want -- men can sell their sperm, women should sell their eggs. Well, let's outlaw the sale of sperm, too.</s>PRESS: Well, let me be sure what you're saying. It is a difficult procedure, a painful procedure. We have talked about that before.</s>ANNAS: Yes.</s>PRESS: Are you saying that a woman should go through this and get absolute no compensation, period?</s>ANNAS: No. I think that it -- certainly if women are going to do this for love -- if they're going to do it for money I don't think you should do it period. But if they're going to do it for love, then I think they should certainly be comped, because I think it's important. I think they should certainly be compensated for their out-of- pocket expenses and whatever we think is reasonable for the discomfort and the risk, and so far, society has seemed to put a value on that of around $2,000 to $3,000, and I certainly wouldn't argue with that. But once we get over $5,000 or $10,000, even the American Society For Reproductive Medicine Ethics Committee, which here I sit on, has said that gets beyond compensating for services and starts paying for the egg and that's what seems to be wrong...</s>PRESS: Well, I think that...</s>ANNAS: ... because the egg -- if you buy eggs for certain characteristics, it's not a child, but you buy them only because it's going to become a child and that's the step toward commodifying children.</s>PRESS: It seems to me there's a basic inequity here. The doctor who is performing those procedures is getting a lot more than $2,000 for it. Why should the doctor be getting rich off this practice, or the attorneys be getting rich off this practice, or the people running these organizations, and the woman is expected to do it and as you say just get her costs covered? I mean, come on.</s>ANNAS: Well, I understand that argument. It's the same argument people make for kidney donation. Why does everybody get paid except the kidney donor or the kidney donor's family? It's because we don't want to exploit people who would only donate eggs or only donate a kidney if they got a large amount of money, because we think that, that can only impact on vulnerable people. And as terms of the doctor, the doctor is in a very, very strange position here. I think if it's only money that the woman is taking in order to participate in this, in order to sell her eggs, then I do not believe it's ethical for any physician to put the woman's -- a healthy woman at risk of any harm in order just for the motive of money. I think that would make the thing wrong both for the woman and for the doctor.</s>CARLSON: Amen. Now, Mr. Pinkerton, you've talked about this whole process as an exercise in liberty. You make it sound like voting, but there's actually more going on here. Let me -- I have here an egg donation profile, which is a question that women who would like to donate their eggs have to fill out. Let's take a look at what -- the questions it asks, have you taken an IQ test, date of test and score, willing to take IQ test? Then it has a whole section about the person's ancestry, here is the part on the maternal grandmother, race, ethnic ancestry, natural hair color, hair type, condition of hair, complexion, freckles -- and here's my favorite -- tanning ability. This is crackpot stuff, Tom. I am wondering why in the world anybody apart from say a Nazi or a eugenecist would want to know the answers to these questions?</s>PINKERTON: If you're a woman and you cannot produce a viable egg, the question is, should you have a choice to choose the characteristics that most match you. People -- women that go through infertility have gone through a lot of pain. They are trying to come to the realization that they can't have their own genetic child, so they want to try to master a child.</s>CARLSON: Oh, please, Tom. Tom, wait on, hold on, tanning ability, I mean, come on? This is like, you know, when you order a car, I would like a CD player and Corinthian leather. I mean, this is utterly frivolous. This is yuppie frivolity at its absolute worst, and I can't imagine why you won't condemn it. Tanning ability? This is a child.</s>PINKERTON: Tanning ability, well, you know, did you go through the other questions, too?</s>CARLSON: I certainly did. But there's -- I mean, the idea that you would be closely tracking a person's generic heritage just doesn't smack of something of Nazism to you at all?</s>PINKERTON: You know what, eugenics is a state coerced action to try to create a perfect race. Do you know in the United States over 100,000 women were involuntarily sterilized because they were retarded, and the Supreme Court of the United States authorized this statute, said that three generations of imbeciles is enough. Now that's eugenics. What we all do when we choose a spouse, maybe consciously, maybe not, is we're trying to marry someone who will provide us with a family. Do we marry someone who we like the looks of, who we think is intelligent, witty, honest, reverent, whatever the traits are -- those personality traits are inheritable.</s>PRESS: OK. George, just before we take a break.</s>ANNAS: That's absolutely right, but we don't buy a spouse, make that clear, we marry a spouse for love, we don't go out and purchase a bride on the open market.</s>PINKERTON: True.</s>ANNAS: That's what this is about, this is about the market.</s>PRESS: This is about the market and now the market -- it used to be $50,000, now the market is $100,000. It sounds like a lot of money. This sounds like a lot of money, except we are talking about Stanford University. I would like to show you what the cost of tuition at Stanford University is, George, in case you haven't checked it out lately. Tuition alone...</s>ANNAS: I am sure it's a lot.</s>PRESS: Tuition alone for one year, this is not counting, you know, books and meals and living space: $23,058. For four years it's $92,232, which is just about $100,000, so by doing this, going through the procedure one time, a young woman could pay her entire college tuition. Why not?</s>ANNAS: Well, you know, she can probably do a lot of things for a $100,000.</s>PRESS: That's better than a lot she could do, isn't it?</s>ANNAS: Her -- well, you might say. It's certainly better than prostitution or organ selling. I guess that's right. But the point is it's not -- she's making a child. She's involved in making a child. It's a much more important decision than how do you pay your tuition or what kind of job am I going to get working in the library or something else, and that's what's missing in this whole debate. We keep talking about procreative liberty as if there's some magic to that mantra that means couples can do whatever they want if they have money to purchase eggs, and where's the logic in that? I mean, do we even know this is real? I mean, I think -- next week if someone else wanted to get on television they'd say, I am offering a quarter of a million.</s>PRESS: All right. Gentlemen, we have to take a break there, so please hold on.</s>ANNAS: OK.</s>PRESS: When we come back, let's talk about the couples who are placing these ads, are they exploiting young women, or are they just desperate people who want to have a child? Get to that when we come back.</s>CARLSON: Welcome back to CROSSFIRE. Sitting in on the right tonight, I'm Tucker Carlson. Babies for sale? A brisk market has emerged in human eggs, some offered for as much as $100,000. Prospective donors are screening for appearance, intelligence and race. Is this Nazi-like eugenics or simply a handy way to build a better baby? We'll ask Tom Pinkerton, attorney for egg donation and surrogacy, and George Annas, professor of health law at Boston University -- Bill.</s>PRESS: Professor Annas, last August the "New Yorker" magazine carried a story about egg donation and there was a profile of a donor there, in one part of that article they talk about the donor looking at these ads and she said, "Gosh, these ads are really sad. Most people have to be really desperate before they will even try something like this." My question to you, isn't that true? I mean, these are people who have been trying a long time to have a child, they can't have a child naturally. If this is the only way they can do it, why deny them that opportunity?</s>ANNAS: Well, first of all, I mean, it is true that there are desperate couples, but it's the desperation that's the problem, not the solution. And secondly, it is not true, ever, that this is the "only way they can have a child." You can always adopt. There are other methods of having children using techniques I am not that fond of like surrogate motherhood. The real question to ask is, well, why wouldn't we permit them to put -- this fellow to put an ad in the paper that says "I want to have sex with a woman with these characteristics and I want her to bear the child," would you think that's fine for $100,000? If it's not fine, why not?</s>PRESS: I see those ads all the -- by the way, I see those ads all the time. They're called personal ads and you can find them in the back of most weekly handout newspapers. But I want to come back to this couple.</s>ANNAS: OK. Well, that's a good way -- that's not a good way to have a child. The ad is not to have a child. The ad is just to have sex.</s>PRESS: I'm not saying it is, we're not -- but don't mix that with couples who really legitimately -- they want to have a child. They're ready to love that child and care for that child. And also, by the way...</s>ANNAS: But they could have a child that way too and I don't know why you think that's wrong and this is right, because it's the same -- you're paying for the sexual services of a woman in both cases that you need in order to have a baby.</s>PRESS: I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I can easily make a distinction between going out and having sex with someone else and having an egg donated or even having to buy it. And here's my question...</s>ANNAS: But what is the distinction?</s>PRESS: May I ask my question before you jump in please?</s>ANNAS: OK, give it a shot.</s>PRESS: If money is involved, I mean, maybe you don't like it, maybe I don't like it, but there have been cases, there was one not too long ago where a couple put an ad in an Ivy League paper, they wanted an egg donor, they got no responses at all. They put a price of $50,000 on there, they got hundreds of responses. George, this is America. I mean, wake up. That's how it works, right?</s>ANNAS: This is America, it's one of the countries that thankfully abolished slavery and most others have too. We do not permit the buying and selling of children, and once you put a price on it, this is clearly not egg donation anymore. These aren't ads for egg donors. These are ads for egg sellers. And the question is whether we want to go across that line and sell eggs? And my answer to that is no, because it's too close to selling children. Your answer apparently is yes.</s>PINKERTON: What I haven't heard so far is the ethics of putting money in the mix. Where is the harm, and why is money a harm? George, I haven't heard you talk about that yet.</s>ANNAS: The harm is to the child. The only reason you'd pay that kind of money is because you'd think you get a specific kind of egg donor, whether it's height, intelligence...</s>PINKERTON: Do you have any data?</s>ANNAS: ... or whiteness, whatever it is you want. And when the child is born you're very genetically naive to think it's going to have the same characteristics as the woman. Obviously, the genes mix with the man, and if it does not, the parents will by definition be disappointed in their child and will take it out on their child.</s>PINKERTON: You know, the data...</s>ANNAS: Is there any data? There is no data, because the fertility industry doesn't keep data. They don't want to know the answer to this, is this bad for children, or bad for the women who don't "donate or sell their eggs." That's why no data is kept, because...</s>PINKERTON: Let me tell you about a colleague of yours, George.</s>ANNAS: ... this is bad for children and bad for women.</s>PRESS: All right, George, let him respond, let him respond. Go ahead, Tom.</s>ANNAS: Of course.</s>PINKERTON: George, a colleague of yours, Dr. Norman Faust (ph) -- do you know him? -- at the University of Michigan.</s>ANNAS: I know him quite well. We disagree on most things, including this.</s>PINKERTON: He's the director of the medical ethics program, the academic program. He's the chair of the hospital ethics committee. And he's the director -- the director of the child protection team at the University of Michigan. He tells me that the limited data that he has is that people that use a new reproductive technology, such as surrogacy and egg donation, that the follow-up on these children is that they're very well-loved, very well-cared-for. The children that are neglected, abused, and not tolerated are the ones that are born, you know, quite by accident. So I think the data suggests just the opposite of what you're saying.</s>ANNAS: Well, Tom...</s>CARLSON: Well, of course it is. Tom, let me ask you a question here, Tom. Now, I can see why you would be supporting obviously the role of money in this, because you're getting -- by the way, what percentage do you take when you buy and sell children? What percentage do you get?</s>PINKERTON: We have a flat fee that we charge. We have a database of donors that came out of the $50,000 ad that we place for a client.</s>CARLSON: Well, obviously you're getting well-paid. But let me ask you this: At a time when there are literally tens of thousands of children in America -- not all with good tanning ability, but children nonetheless -- languishing in foster care, waiting to be adopted, why should we support, apart from the fact it makes you rich, buying and selling babies on a designer boutique basis for yuppies? I mean, isn't that -- isn't that morally appalling to you?</s>PINKERTON: Well, first of all, we're not buying and selling babies. We are, if you will, buying eggs. You know, the fact that because there's another alternative for someone to have a child, to adopt a child, does that mean that the person's -- should be limited to only adopting children?</s>CARLSON: It means you probably shouldn't be buying and selling children. We can't even establish that as a baseline, I guess, that that's wrong.</s>CARLSON: Well, first of all, just to repeat that over and over again doesn't advance the argument of discussion about what the ethics are. It's not buying and selling children. It's...</s>ANNAS: Let me ask Tom a question if I can, all right? I mean, you just said that you put -- you have a database of egg donors, which you developed from your $50,000 ad. It's been suggested by others -- let me suggest it now -- that that ad was a ruse just so you could develop a database, that you really weren't interested in paying 50,000. You wanted just to find a lot of women who would be willing to sell their eggs. Is that true?</s>PRESS: I...</s>ANNAS: So you can make some money?</s>PRESS: Quick response.</s>PINKERTON: Unfortunately, because our clients have a high degree of privacy, you know, I -- there's no way I can prove it to you. I wish that some of them could...</s>ANNAS: I'll take your word for it.</s>PINKERTON: ... actually come forward and talk. But that's not the nature of the beast. This is a private matter.</s>PRESS: All right, gentlemen, that's got to be it. Our last word, because we're out of time. George Annas in Boston, thanks very much for joining us. Tom Pinkerton, thanks for joining us from San Diego. Tucker Carlson and I will be back with our closing comments.</s>PRESS: Tucker, you could never be a sperm donor, by the way. Your tanning ability, you know, is just not right up to par. But seriously...</s>CARLSON: There are other problems.</s>PRESS: Yes. There are other problems too. Look, seriously, used to be people thought there was just one way to have a baby. If they couldn't do it that way, then they would adopt. Today, there are all kinds of other options: in vitro, surrogate parents, sperm donors, egg donors. Tucker, you're not going to turn back the clock. And if there's money involved, hey...</s>CARLSON: And who would want to? And allowing women who are infertile to have children is one of the best advances science has come upon.</s>CARLSON: But the idea that you would sell children is nauseating. And the idea that you would pick characteristics, like you're breeding dogs, is revolting. I mean, we need to go watch "Boys From Brazil." That movie should be required viewing for everybody who's considered this procedure.</s>PRESS: You can say it a hundred times: Buying an egg is not buying a child. And if you can't see that distinction...</s>CARLSON: Then why are you buying an egg if the child doesn't result.</s>PRESS: ... abortion and murder.</s>CARLSON: You make it sound like, "Oh, an egg! Oh, my gosh! A child results. Can you imagine?" That's the point.</s>PRESS: Every sperm -- wait a minute. By your logic, every sperm is a child.</s>CARLSON: No, but when you buy an egg, you're doing it to become a child.</s>PRESS: Well, Tucker, then there you go.</s>CARLSON: Oh please.</s>PRESS: From the left, I'm Bill Press. "Every sperm is sacred." Good night for</s>CROSSFIRE. CARLSON: Sitting in on the right, I'm Tucker Carlson. Join us again tomorrow night for another edition of CROSSFIRE.