But women donating to research should be reimbursed, says panel
By
Serene Luo
ST PHOTO: STEPHANIE YEOW
WOMEN who donate their eggs for research should be reimbursed - but only for expenses such as cab fares, and their earnings in the time taken up.
They should not, however, expect to be paid for the inconvenience, pain undergone, nor risks involved in egg extraction, said the Bioethics Advisory Committee (BAC) of Singapore, a high-level body set up in 2000 to guide researchers through troubling ethical, legal and social issues which arise as science advances.
The committee yesterday unveiled seven recommendations on the handling of human eggs donated for research in Singapore.
Currently women are not paid for donating their eggs.
Another recommendation by the committee was that only donors who give their eggs specifically for research should be reimbursed, and not women who donate excess fertilised eggs after completing fertility treatments.
Also, donors can change their minds at any time - even after the eggs have been removed from their bodies.
It also recommended that regulation, or legislation, may be necessary to control egg donation for research.
BAC chairman Lim Pin said that he did not want human egg donation to become a 'business opportunity', in which women made money by trading their eggs.
'We should not treat parts or tissues from the body as disposable economic assets or saleable human body parts,' Professor Lim said.
The decision to allow women to be reimbursed comes two days after the Health Minister announced that individuals who give up one of their kidneys for a stranger will be compensated.
Both decisions move Singapore forward in the debate over how to handle human tissue donated voluntarily for medicine.
Human eggs are in demand by biomedical researchers as the progenitors of stem cells, which can differentiate into any kind of human cell.
Yet estimates are that fewer than 10 women who are not undergoing clinical fertility treatment voluntarily undergo the time-consuming and painful process each year.
For about two weeks, a donor has to have daily hormone injections to induce ovulation of multiple eggs.
During harvesting, the woman is sedated and a needle injected to remove the eggs in a 20-minute operation.
The donor faces a slight risk of excessive bleeding and infections or other complications in the ovaries.
Though the BAC did not want human eggs to be for sale, it wanted 'a certain fairness' for the donors 'so they are not made to suffer financial loss', Prof Lim said.
The committee took in the views expressed by the public, including religious and health organisations, in a consultation process from November last year to January this year.
Most respondents agreed that some reimbursement was fair, though they called for clear guidelines on the amounts, and penalties for those who flout the rules.
Professor Lee Eng Hin, who chaired the Human Embryo and Chimera Research Working Group of the BAC, said he hoped clearer guidelines would persuade women to come forward to help the advancement of science.
The report has been handed over to the Government to act on, said Prof Lim.
