Cut-price IVF for the women who donate their eggs for research

The unique deal is being paid for by the Government-funded Medical Research Council which says alternative schemes have all failed.

It will now meet half the cost of a course, around £1,500, in return for half the eggs produced.

Critics accused the council of 'sheer hypocrisy' last night, saying desperate women might feel coerced into taking part for financial reasons.

The council admitted it also had concerns about the ethics of paying people to take part in research and insisted it was a 'one-off' deal.

The scheme is being run by the North East England Stem Cell Institute in Newcastle, which two years ago announced it had created an early-stage cloned human embryo, now recognised as a world first.

Although it survived only a few days, the scientists hope they will eventually get stem cells from embryos matched to an individual.

Ultimately these 'building block' cells could be used to repair damaged tissue and organs.

So far the team has been obtaining eggs by asking women to donate two eggs if at least 12 are produced during their IVF cycle.

Over seven months, however, this generated only 66 fresh eggs.

The cut-price deal was approved by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority in July last year and confirmed after a public consultation in January 2007.

But the research council's award of £150,000 for subsidising IVF treatment, with a further £760,000 for research costs, has only just been announced.

Professor Alison Murdoch, head of the Newcastle Fertility Centre, said priority would be given to infertile women in the North-East aged between 21 and 35, who would be counselled.

She said: "I'm delighted at the MRC funding which allows us to recompense women who wish to donate eggs for their time and trouble.

"This will ease the financial burden for those who require IVF.

"There is no additional physical risk to the woman as a result of egg sharing.

"We expect this to open the door to some infertile women who will now find it less difficult to meet the cost of IVF."

However, Josephine Quintavalle, of the campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said the scheme was tantamount to buying eggs and would put intolerable pressures on women.

She added: "This is exploitation of those who will be enticed into taking part because of financial i n d u c e m e n t s .

"It's sheer hypocrisy when the HFEA says no money should exchange hands for fertility treatment.

"It also creates the circumstances where the tendency would be to over- stimulate women to produce more eggs, when targeted treatment using less stimulation is becoming the gold standard."

The research council stressed the scheme is 'extremely unusual' and is a special case that should not establish a precedent .

"There are ethical issues in providing payment for treatment of people who are participating in research, and this is not normally MRC policy," said a spokesman.

"But in this case the women would be taking no additional risks to their health by providing surplus eggs for research.

"In addition, it was accepted that this would be the only approach that could provide the number of human eggs necessary for this research."

Dr Mary Herbert, who will lead the research, said: "This will enable us to progress towards improving the efficiency of therapeutic cloning in humans.

"Freshly-harvested human eggs will also enable us to address a number of important questions related to the underlying causes of infertility and birth defects."