In this episode, Therese Markow and Dr. Diane Tober discuss the global egg donation industry, highlighting its lack of regulations and exploitative nature. Dr. Tober details some of her research on egg donors, revealing severe risks and some life-threatening complications that can affect 10-12% of donors. They discuss how donors are often uninformed about the risks and the pressures faced by donors to donate beyond current guidelines. With compensation varying wildly, there are often financial pressures that donors face, too. Finally, Dr. Tober advocates for standardized informed consent, actual limits on donation cycles, and a national registry to track donor health.

Key Takeaways:

• Changes to preserving and freezing eggs in 2013 changed from slow freezing to flash freezing, which better preserved the egg and changed the industry.

• Not having limits on the number of children that can be born from donated sperm or eggs can have dire consequences for the people conceived from those donations.

• There are discrepancies in compensation based on education, race, and other traits that are considered to be desirable for intended parents.

• There are no consistent laws or regulations regarding who pays for donor medical complications.

• There is no perfect system currently existing for egg donation. But creating a safer system could begin with a donor registry.

"Sometimes donors exceed the limit because of the financial incentives, and sometimes donors exceed the limit because they're coerced or enticed by the agencies or clinics that are using them and profiting off of them." — Dr. Diane Tober

Connect with Dr. Diane Tober:

Professional Bio: https://issr.ua.edu/people/diane-tober/

Website: https://dianetober.com/

Book: Eggonomics: The Global Market in Human Eggs and the Donors Who Supply Them

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianetober/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/perfectdonor/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DianeToberPhD/

Connect with Therese:

Website: www.criticallyspeaking.net

Threads: @critically_speaking

Email: theresemarkow@criticallyspeaking.net

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