New York’s Empire State Stem Cell Board has decided to pay women up to $10,000 to give eggs for embryonic stem cell research, according to an article in today’s Washington Post. New York is the first state to allow taxpayer-funded researchers to do so, which is against the guidelines of scientific organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences.According to the article, efforts to obtain eggs without payment have largely failed, since the procedure requires that a woman “undergo weeks of hormone injections to stimulate their ovaries to produce eggs and then a painful procedure to extract the eggs. The procedure can in rare cases cause a dangerous overstimulation of the ovaries, and there are concerns about the possible long-term risks of hormonal stimulation.”
In other words, without getting paid a large sum of money, donating eggs to research is something that very few women would want to do. If their minds are changed by a payment of $10,000, this suggests that the typical donor is desperate.
Ronald M. Green, a Dartmouth College bioethicist (the irony), argues, "It is discriminatory against women to ban them from receiving payment. We pay for participation in research that has risks associated with it for other procedures. So why not this? The idea that women cannot make that decision on their own strikes me as sexist.”
However, this is not an issue of how well women can make decisions compared to men, but instead whether it is ethical to take advantage of anyone, man or woman, who agrees to an action that they are opposed to, simply because they are extremely desperate for the money. Of course, women can make decisions. But can they make a free, voluntary choice in this matter if money is the issue? And, are they given adequate information of the risks involved, especially possible long term consequences? Is risking your life worth $5,000 or $10,000? If the amount is high enough, desperate people will do what it takes to receive the money, no matter how degrading or harmful the action, especially if facing debt collectors on all sides.
Furthermore, there is an even greater ethical issue in using eggs for embryonic stem cell research in the first place, given that embryonic stem cells are derived from the destruction of human life. In addition, absolutely no cures have resulted from research using embryonic stem cells, despite billions of dollars in funding.
Given that this is an industry built on the destruction of defenseless embryos, it is not surprising that they have decided to further their research by preying on desperate women.
