Thursday, July 09, 2009

For those curious about what happened to Couple E...I never went through that donation. I ended up canceling the donation before it even begun. I was getting an overall sense that it was not meant to be ( I couldn't get a hold of the clinic, I had problems getting an appointment set up, etc.) So eventually I just took the break that I felt like I needed. I don't regret not going through the donation, I do feel bad that I had to let the couple down though.

I also noticed that there seems to be a lot of hoopla about compensation on the web. Looks like a bit of uniformity is going on with the amounts that a donor is allowed to receive. I am just curious, what did everyone pay their donors as compensation? It seems odd to tell people they are only allowed a certain amount when the people deciding this regulation probably never had to go through a donation or retrieval. I am not condoning an large amount of money being requested, I just don't know who is right or wrong. I read that the max nowadays is $10k. Is that true? What is everyone's opinion on this?

1 comment:

Summer said...

My donor asked for $8k. I know there are donors who ask more than $10k or $15, especially after they have had a successful donation (i.e. pregnancy).

There was a paper published that analyzed the time spent as an egg donor and came up with the range $5k to $10k as a reasonable range for compensation. This was based on how much sperm donors are paid (I think the authors based it on $300/per hr) and time spent included preliminary testing, psych consults, doing the injections, etc. as well as the actual medical procedures.

ASRM guidelines are no more than $10k for donor compensation, but these guidelines aren't enforceable.

Personally, I felt uncomfortable with a donor who asked for more than $10k, even if she was several times proven. I don't know why. Somehow paying over $10k made me feel more like I was buying my donor's eggs rather than compensating her and that just felt too impersonal. Although my donor is anonymous to me and I think the money is a large part of why donors donate their eggs (although not the only reason) I didn't want the act of her donating her eggs to me to be solely a business "transaction" between the two of us even though there are certainly aspects of the donation that is just a transaction.