Infertility Clinic Raffles Off Human Egg

Thursday, 18 March 2010 | by Pat's Picks

Last week, we gave away a $50 iTunes gift card to subscribers who signed up for your daily newsletter. Seems reasonable, right? The Washington Post says a Virginia infertility clinic took the idea of a free giveaway to the next level when it offered up “an attempt to get pregnant using an American woman’s eggs” at a seminar in London. Infertility experts and bioethicists immediately condemned the raffle, saying “it trivializes altruistic donation, whether of eggs, sperm or embryos.” A spokesman for the clinic says the idea that a human egg was being raffled off is a misrepresentation: “The offer of a free treatment cycle or package of treatment is not an unusual technique. This is just a niche we saw to offer this service.”