IVF expert welcomes egg ban

Around 6,000 babies a year are born through IVF

A Welsh medical consultant has welcomed the new ban on donating human eggs for commercial reasons.

Mr Peter Bowen-Simpkins, of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said he was 100% behind the ban imposed by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HEFA).

It stops women going through more than one medical procedure in order to donate eggs to someone else in exchange for subsidising her own treatment.

Mr Bowen-Simpkins, who is also director of the IVF Unit at Swansea's Singleton Hospital, said: "I am delighted at the decision."

Potential dangers

Because of the commercial transaction reasons associated with women selling their eggs and the potential dangers to health associated with it, the Royal College was 100% against the procedure.

The HEFA have banned a scheme allowing women to have cheap IVF treatment if they are prepared to go through the fertility treatment twice and donate half their eggs.

The ban does not affect "altruistic" egg giving, in which a woman gives up her eggs willingly when she does not undergo fertility treatment herself.

Mr Bowen-Simpkins said that this procedure had been taking place at his unit in Swansea for the past four years.

He said: "This (egg sharing) is a very popular procedure and can help women in their 40s conceive and also helps when there is a great need to avoid genetic diseases."

He added that it differed from the now banned "egg giving" is that it did not have the same health risks associated with it. Unlike "egg giving" donors had to go through the procedure twice.

Repeating the procedure had its danger, the consultant said, including the inherent risks of using a needle on multiple occasions to retrieve eggs but also the possible long-term danger which slightly increased the risk of ovarian cancer.

In imposing the ban the HEFA was responding to fears from members of the public and clinics that egg giving plans were unethical.

At the moment a single treatment cycle of IVF costs between £2,000 and £4,000, and more than one is usually required.

There is a nationwide shortage of donor eggs which help women who have none of their own.

A human egg - but "egg giving" is now officially banned in the UK

To solve this option some clinics were offering couples who could not afford to pay for IVF the option of cheaper treatment if they gave up some of their eggs.

While the HEFA says that this is acceptable if the woman agrees to give up some of the eggs from each subsidised cycle she gets, it now will not be allowed if the scheme involves the woman undergoing extra cycles in order to yield donor eggs.

This extra procedure, for commercial reasons, is where the additional health risks are introduced.

Suzi Leather, chairman of the HFEA, said: "We cannot allow clinics to offer a treatment where a woman, for no other reason than financial inducement, subjects herself to an unnecessary and possibly risky procedure."

Mr Bowen-Simpkins said that in countries such as Canada, Denmark and Israel, the egg sharing option with its lower risks was the only procedure allowed.