Almost every story I see regarding donor siblings involves donor insemination and there is virtually no mention of donor egg yet it's hard not to pick up a newspaper without seeing an advertisement soliciting young women to donate their eggs. Yet somehow the new stories continue focusing on DI. Why is that?
My first guess is that there are far fewer donor egg sibling matches out there. I have no idea how true this is but I plan to post the question on my next visit to the DSR yahoo groups. The biology is quite clear that one man's DI sample can be parsed into a number of saleable vials and result in multiple children but that only a limited number of eggs are produced by one egg donor thus decreasing the chances of sibling matches. I would also expect that the number of times a woman donates must be a tiny fraction of the samples produced by their male counterparts due to the physical stress it causes and the requirement of increased medical review.
So you would think that the media would focus on this more invasive procedure as opposed to the side where the men just fill up a cup. But the media goes for the easy story of the cute kids faces created via DI.
In contrast The Independent (UK online edition) yesterday (3/26/2006) published an article titled "The Donor Business: The Price of Eggs" and discusses in detail the business end of this side of the donor conception business. It is a pretty in depth article about the costs incurred by both the egg donors themselves and the prices being paid by the purchasers and why donors are lured into donating. The article focuses on the UK DE world but is still quite telling.
I started writing this post as I wanted to compare the emotions of a DI mom carrying another woman's eggs, birthing and raising that child to my own feelings as a DI Dad but I got off track. Perhaps another time.
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