Marketing reproduction

Assisted reproduction is a $4 billion business in this country. Would-be parents who use in vitro fertilization, sperm banks, and egg donors, can expect to pay anywhere from $13,000 to $250,000. Women who donate their eggs can make thousands of dollars, with premiums paid to Ivy League students and women of certain hard-to-find ethnic backgrounds.

Harvard professor Deborah Spar studies the business side of the fertility industry. She’ll speak next week at the University of Minnesota.

Spar is the author of "Baby Business: How Markets are Changing the Future of Birth." She’ll present, "Building a Better Baby Business: What's Wrong with the Market for Assisted Reproduction and How to Make it Better."

Spar argues that the women who donate eggs should be better informed of the health risks associated with egg donation and protected against them. She says controversy over the price of eggs is getting more attention than how egg donation affects the donors.

In a recent New York Times interview, she says:

“For egg extractions in general, there have been a couple of instances of horrific side effects. There are lots of cases of smaller ones. When you take large doses of hormones to produce eggs -- either as a donor or an infertile woman -- you're going to have bloating, mood swings, discomfort. All this is manageable. But if you do that three or four times, are there longer-term effects we don't yet know about?”

Spar is calling for more studies of the drugs being used, more long-term follow-up of donors and federal regulations to ensure proper informed consent.

In England, egg donors aren't paid; they just get a small amount of money to reimburse them for expenses, nothing like the thousands of dollars donors can make in the US. Should we have a similar system in the U.S.?