Egg donation is not as simple as it sounds

This has now changed and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has decided to pay a one-off fee of £750 per course of donation.

I expressed concern that this would encourage an unscrupulous few to exploit punters by making egg donation seem an easy way to earn money without any explanation of the procedure or the risks involved. Sadly, it seems this may be happening.

Experts are already starting to express fears, based on recent reports, that women donors are being subjected to "intensive farming" at fertility clinics, with official figures showing that one woman had 85 eggs harvested in a single session, while another produced 80.

This is not simply a case of being too efficient in trying to recoup costs; it could actually be putting women's lives at risk. Egg donation is an invasive process that involves daily hormone injections, scans every couple of days, and day surgery to recover the eggs. The levels of stimulating hormones needed to produce such egg harvests can cause serious side effects such as headaches, mood swings, fatigue, bloating and pain, and also a potentially fatal reaction called ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome.

This causes abdominal swelling and bloating due to the enlarged ovaries, which release chemicals that make blood vessels leaky, allowing fluid to build up in the abdomen causing pain, nausea and vomiting. In severe cases extreme thirst and dehydration occur because so much fluid builds up, and patients can have difficulty breathing. Fatal blood clots can affect the legs and lungs as a result of immobility and dehydration.

There is no treatment to reverse OHSS, and most egg donors are at particular risk of developing it. This is because they are young and fertile, and women given ovarian stimulation drugs who produce more than 20 egg sacs have an 85 per cent higher chance of developing it. To make matters worse, initial investigations have found record-keeping in IVF clinics to be less than adequate, making it hard to monitor the incidence of OHSS and to know which clinics use the highest doses of drugs to stimulate egg production.

The compensation paid to women for their time and discomfort was increased to try to encourage more women to come forward to be donors. Numbers had dropped alarmingly since a change in the law in 2005 removed the anonymity of egg and sperm donors, meaning that children conceived this way would have the right to identify their genetic parents once they reached 18. Thankfully, only five women have died from OHSS to date, and the risks of dying during a pregnancy are much higher than the risks from IVF treatment, but unscrupulous practice and a lack of regulation and policing will simply compound the problem. If reports continue to emerge of donors being treated like battery hens, then the egg shortage will only get worse.

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