Act will be amended to allow reimbursement for loss of earnings
By
Judith Tan
THE health authorities have accepted a high-level ethics committee's recommendation to compensate women for donating their eggs.
The Ministry of Health (MOH) said it would amend the Human Cloning and Other Prohibited Practices Act, which now allows women to be reimbursed only for expenses such as travel and childcare.
The Bioethics Advisory Committee (BAC) of Singapore recommended on Monday that women also be compensated for earnings lost during the time taken for egg donation. MOH said it would amend the Act to allow this.
The BAC hoped its recommendation of fair compensation would encourage women to come forward to donate their eggs - among the most highly prized items for biomedical research. So far, no woman here has ever voluntarily donated her eggs purely for research.
Most embryonic stem-cell research now is based on eggs left over from fertility treatments. These, while valuable, are limiting as most are already fertilised.
Human eggs are critical in creating stem cells, which may one day be able to generate tissue or even whole body parts to treat incurable diseases.
The hope is to one day be able to regenerate deteriorating brain tissue, repair damaged hearts and create insulin-producing cells for the treatment of diabetes, said Professor Lee Eng Hin, who chaired the BAC's Human Embryo and Chimera Research Working Group.
Experts say at least 100 human eggs are needed to create just one stem-cell line.
The authorities hope that paying for the time and earnings lost during the two to eight weeks it takes to harvest the eggs will help some women change their minds. Donors require daily injections to induce multiple ovulations. The eggs are harvested in a 20-minute procedure.
Both the ethics committee and the ministry have come out strongly against the outright sale of eggs, which in countries like the United States can net donors tens of thousands of dollars.
While the American Society for Reproductive Medicine considers compensation of US$5,000 (S$7,400) or more to 'require justification' and sums exceeding US$10,000 'beyond what is appropriate', some centres in the US pay up to US$15,000, according to news reports.
BAC chairman Professor Lim Pin said human egg donation should not become a 'business opportunity' for women to make money by trading their eggs.
'We should not treat parts or tissues from the body as disposable economic assets or saleable human body parts,' Prof Lim said.
But BAC decided that some kind of compensation for time and lost earnings was fair, a decision with which MOH agreed.
Also, donors should not have to bear the 'cost of treatment for any medical complications that may arise', said the ministry.
The amendments may consider Britain's law, which allows donors to be compensated for loss of earnings up to a daily cap of $168.
In Hong Kong, an egg donor may claim up to a total of $184 for earnings lost, travel expenses, minding services and medical expenses before the donation, and $236 on the day of egg collection.
