Three Ways You Can Make Egg Donation Safer In 30 Minutes or Less

1. Write an honest Yelp review about your egg donation experience.

There’s very little regulation on the fertility industry.

It’s been said that it’s easier to open a human egg brokerage firm than it is to open a food truck business in the United States. The result? Clinics and agencies run themselves as they please. Unfortunately, this can leave egg donors feeling more like a product than a real patient.

Leaving a Yelp review on your experience will help others decide about whether, when, or with which particular agency or clinic to go through with egg donation. Had a lousy experience? A wonderful experience? Head over to Yelp and leave a detailed review.

It makes a difference.

For example, one of our members negatively reviewed an egg donor agency — this agency, The World Egg Bank, has raised some red flags among several other members as well. The negative review then prompted this agency to write a slew of 5-star reviews about their own agency, some of which were blatantly falsified. One “review” — since flagged and removed — was even penned by the agency’s coordinator!

Sketchy, but it proves the point that your feedback matters.

2. Support research on egg donor health.

Donor eggs have been used for 30 years, but there have been no long term studies on the health effects egg donation.

You can help by signing up for a registry led by a team of researchers at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and Baylor College of Medicine.

It is the only national voluntary registry set up to follow the long term health of all those utilizing Assisted Reproductive Technologies, including egg donors.

Signing up takes only 10 minutes. Go here!

3. Join thousands of advocates who would like to see clinical trial data made public.

Although Lupron is a drug commonly prescribed to egg donors, this is all so-called “off label” use. FDA-approved uses of Lupron are for endometriosis, fibroid-associated bleeding, central precocious puberty, and the palliative treatment of men with prostate cancer. Jennifer Dziura writes more about this in her article The Truth About Egg Donation.

What’s pretty freaky is that AbbVie and InterMune — the multi-billion dollar American companies behind meds like Humira, Esbriet, and Lupron — have claimed that certain human trial data are “trade secrets” and that releasing data on the benefits and harms of these drugs would harm their profits.

“AbbVie has filed suit against the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to prevent its (planned) release of all clinical data for all drugs. As you may know, Abbott/AbbVie has its Lupron clinical data under seal in the US federal court system, and thus this important information is inaccessible to the public. If EMA succeeds in its mission of making all clinical trial data public, then we would finally see this data that we have so long sought,” writes Judy Norsigian, Executive Director of Our Bodies, Ourselves.

Showing your support only takes one minute. Sign the petition here!

BONUS TIP #4 Link up with other egg donors.

We’re the first and only organization that is 100% dedicated to the needs of egg donors.

Through our group, we’ve had eye-opening, revelatory conversations with sister egg donors in more than ten countries. The subject of advocacy comes up quite a bit. There’s definitely a lot of room for change in this industry.

If you want to join our tight-knit conversation — for egg donors only — email Claire, Sierra, or me at info /at/ weareeggdonors.com.