Are you a tall, fair-skinned, healthy and educated woman? Well! Then you're a "prime candidate" to earn thousands of dollars!
This proposal caught my attention last February when I came across a Facebook ad that read: "Women, want to make $6,000 in one month? Donate your eggs!" Because I was a typical poor college student, I was incredibly intrigued, yet concerned about potential psychological and physical repercussions.
So, for the past year I have been researching/weighing the pros and cons of changing my body from a playground into a factory.
When I moved to New York City still poor and still a college student egg donation once again entered my mind. When I came across a clinic last month willing to pay $10,000 per donation (women could potentially donate up to six times), I immediately filled out an online application "just to see."
I received a friendly email from the coordinator a few hours after I'd sent in my application and photos. She wanted to talk to me at my earliest convenience.
During my in-person interview the next day, she expressed "some concern" that cancer runs in my family. However, she alluded that because I am college educated, fair-skinned, have blue eyes, am in shape and artistic, I was still a "prime candidate."
"Will the drugs administered to me increase my chances of cancer because it's already in my family," I asked.
"There's no proof that one has anything to do with the other," she replied.
The interview was going swimmingly I could feel that $10,000 check in my grasp. And then the final question was asked: "Has anyone in your family ever been 20 pounds or more overweight?" Confused, I answered that there are a few people that could fit that profile. Her excited face changed instantly.
"And why didn't you indicate this on your form," she interrogated me sternly as if I had been wasting her time.
I apologized and admitted that it never crossed my mind.
Being rebuffed so suddenly, so brashly due to one aesthetic "flaw" in my genes especially since the potential "cancer gene" was acceptable made me reflect on this market differently.
Before my interview, I had discussed the process with a mentoring professor from SUNY Fredonia. She asked me to consider that "egg donation" was a euphemism for a contemporary form of eugenics.
Initially, I was stunned. Eugenics faded out after World War II ... there was no way it could be legally executed today.
But she argued that even though egg donation marketing is different from earlier eugenic practices, there is still a debate that lingering ideological threads between 20th century eugenics and 21t century forms of reproductive and genetic technologies exists.
After my experience, I reflected on advertisements for donors and consumers, the extensive screening and application process, and the overall superior criteria that egg donors must satisfy it was true that only the "cream of the crop" were allowed to "donate" their genes.
Despite the fact that there is very little proof that a donor's "most coveted assets" traits such as intelligence, artistic talent, and compassion are genetically transmitted and inheritable, the ads for egg donors continue to list such qualities.
I found it additionally curious that unlike most industrialized nations Canada, Australia and countries in Europe the marketplace for female genes is currently unregulated in the United States (in most countries, it is illegal to profit from egg donation).
In effect, such ads are promising parents miracle babies for large sums of money.
Even though egg donation is marketed toward women's heartstrings to "help another woman conceive," it would appear that this appeal is deceiving. Endorsed as a humanitarian service, the truth is that capitalism flourishes under this evolutionary experiment that uses genetic engineering, gene manipulation, and - eugenic selection.
Sarah T. Schwab is a Sunday OBSERVER contributor. Visit her Web site at www.sarahtschwab.com and send comments to editorial@observertoday.com