Students targeted in illegal egg trade
By Wang Qingchu |
November 15, 2011, Tuesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
AN illegal trade in human eggs is booming in Beijing, targeting university students who can sell their eggs at prices ranging from several to tens of thousands of yuan.
Brokers charging high commission arrange the whole process from the sellers to recipients including physical checks and surgery, the Beijing News reported yesterday.
Ads which detail requirements such as facial features, educational background and other traits are frequently posted on Beijing university online forums by brokers.
Usually an egg is sold for 5,000 yuan (US$786), but the price can rise to as high as 30,000 yuan if the sellers are students at Peking University and Tsinghua University, considered two of the best in China, the report said.
Under Chinese law, it is illegal to buy human eggs or receive them for free. Only women who have extra eggs while undergoing vitro fertilization can donate eggs to others. But this is extremely rare and unlikely to happen, said Xue Qing, a doctor at the Maternity and Children's Hospital of Peking University.
However, the ban has spurred an underground market where infertile couples are happy to pay 50,000 to 100,000 yuan to agencies to find women willing to sell their eggs.
There are several hundred agencies with thousands of staff providing services to around 10,000 couples each year in the industry, Wang Chao, a man who had been in the business for more than eight years, told the newspaper. The demand for eggs is huge, Wang said, as more than 10 percent of women are infertile in China and "it is almost impossible to get eggs via legal means."
After university students agree to sell their eggs, middlemen set up interviews between the women and the recipients.
The report quoted Li Chen, who works for a brokerage called Sunshine Surrogacy in Beijing, as saying there were no contracts or signed agreements between the parties in order to protect privacy.
After the women are chosen by the clients, middlemen arrange psychical checkups.
The donors then receive injections to stimulate ovulation before they undergo a procedure to harvest the eggs, the report said.
"As China has strict rules about conducting such surgery, the procedures are usually done in private hospitals or in foreign countries," an industry insider told the newspaper.
"I don't regret it. I don't want to know where my egg went and just want to forget everything," 20-year-old college student Li Qing told the newspaper.
Xue warned that inducing ovulation carries the risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome which could lead to bloating, pulmonary embolism, kidney failure and can even prove fatal.
Experts said as the surgeries were done in private it would be difficult for sellers to protect their rights.
Brokers charging high commission arrange the whole process from the sellers to recipients including physical checks and surgery, the Beijing News reported yesterday.
Ads which detail requirements such as facial features, educational background and other traits are frequently posted on Beijing university online forums by brokers.
Usually an egg is sold for 5,000 yuan (US$786), but the price can rise to as high as 30,000 yuan if the sellers are students at Peking University and Tsinghua University, considered two of the best in China, the report said.
Under Chinese law, it is illegal to buy human eggs or receive them for free. Only women who have extra eggs while undergoing vitro fertilization can donate eggs to others. But this is extremely rare and unlikely to happen, said Xue Qing, a doctor at the Maternity and Children's Hospital of Peking University.
However, the ban has spurred an underground market where infertile couples are happy to pay 50,000 to 100,000 yuan to agencies to find women willing to sell their eggs.
There are several hundred agencies with thousands of staff providing services to around 10,000 couples each year in the industry, Wang Chao, a man who had been in the business for more than eight years, told the newspaper. The demand for eggs is huge, Wang said, as more than 10 percent of women are infertile in China and "it is almost impossible to get eggs via legal means."
After university students agree to sell their eggs, middlemen set up interviews between the women and the recipients.
The report quoted Li Chen, who works for a brokerage called Sunshine Surrogacy in Beijing, as saying there were no contracts or signed agreements between the parties in order to protect privacy.
After the women are chosen by the clients, middlemen arrange psychical checkups.
The donors then receive injections to stimulate ovulation before they undergo a procedure to harvest the eggs, the report said.
"As China has strict rules about conducting such surgery, the procedures are usually done in private hospitals or in foreign countries," an industry insider told the newspaper.
"I don't regret it. I don't want to know where my egg went and just want to forget everything," 20-year-old college student Li Qing told the newspaper.
Xue warned that inducing ovulation carries the risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome which could lead to bloating, pulmonary embolism, kidney failure and can even prove fatal.
Experts said as the surgeries were done in private it would be difficult for sellers to protect their rights.
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