As an obstetrics nurse, Tammi Doeing would see it all the time. Women unable to conceive. Women consistently miscarrying. Women, and their partners, devastated.
“It’s a very hard thing to witness,” Doeing said.
So two years ago, Doeing signed up to be an egg donor, undergoing an arduous process to help another family have a baby. She got $3,000 for her sacrifice–a sum she happily accepted, but alone not reason enough to warrant the daily injections and sore, swollen belly that came with it.
“I did it because of the people I saw who needed it,” said Doeing, now 34, of Hebron, Ind. “The money was a nice bonus.”
As many ads on the “L” and in college newspapers attest, your body can fetch a pretty penny.
Give a few eggs, ladies, and get a few thousand dollars. Hand over some sperm, gentlemen, and get cash handed back. You have money coursing through your veins and growing on your head. Become a human guinea pig to score a few bucks more.
The idea of profiting from your body is inherently controversial, given the potential health hazards of some procedures and, in the case of donating reproductive material, the possibility your DNA will be scampering about.
But plenty of people don’t think their bodies are sacred when it comes to the laws of supply and demand.
Richard Dauzvardis, 27, sells his plasma twice a week at the Interstate Blood Bank in Albany Park, making $50 weekly that goes toward putting gas in his car so he can drive to job interviews. With four kids and a wife–a disabled veteran–at home, the plasma money helps make ends meet, said Dauzvardis, who is trying to get a job as a forklift operator but hopes to eventually go to school for computer repair.
Dauzvardis of Lawndale said he sits with a needle in his arm for about 45 minutes per session, a machine separating the plasma in his blood from the red and white blood cells. The latter are returned to his body, while the plasma goes to make medicines for such disorders as hemophilia, immune system deficiencies, burns and shock.
“You’re making money, but you’re also helping somebody,” Dauzvardis said.
A less invasive–and more profitable–endeavor is selling your hair.
Becky Wolff, a 19-year-old freshman at Illinois State University in Bloomington-Normal, got $1,000 for her waist-length blond tresses, which she sold on thehairtrader.com to a man who plans to sell them as extensions.
Wolff, a Vernon Hills native, said she’d been planning to get her hair cut anyway. The 17 inches she lopped off will help boost her student budget and pay for a plane ticket to Florida for spring break.
Thehairtrader.com, which launched two months ago, gets about 20 new sellers per day, many of them hawking their locks to pay off bills or student loans, said founder Jacalyn Elise.
Fertile eggs are perhaps the most lucrative in the body-part market. Most fertility centers offer between $2,000 and $8,000 for a batch of a woman’s eggs, though some inflate prices to the tens of thousands of dollars for donors with particularly desirable attributes, like Ivy League degrees.
As the money reflects, egg harvesting is no small endeavor.
Donors–after they’re chosen from a catalog that includes their ethnic background, height and weight, coloring and education–are required to give themselves daily hormone injections for about a month and visit the doctor every other day for blood work and vaginal ultrasounds. During surgery, several of their eggs are removed from their ovaries with a needle.
The male counterpart to egg donation, sperm donation, is less burdensome, and fetches about $75 for each acceptable semen sample. But contrary to popular belief, it takes more than a cup and a magazine to become a donor. Urine samples, blood tests and other screenings can take up to six weeks. At the Midwest Sperm Bank in Downers Grove, less than 5 percent of the applicants are accepted, according to the bank’s Web site.
The high prices offered for eggs have some worried that the industry is amounting to a baby auction–a concern compounded because the industry in the U.S. is largely self-regulated. While the Food and Drug Administration regulates the medical screening of egg donors, psychological screening and compensation are dictated only by guidelines provided by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, which advises offering about $5,000.
Fertility specialists say compensation for egg donation is necessary to attract suitable donors, especially as women waiting longer to have children are fueling the demand for donor eggs. Marketing is sometimes targeted at donors of certain ethnic backgrounds–including Chinese, Filipino, Jewish and Indian–who are in particularly short supply, said Cheryl Tropsic, egg donor coordinator for Advanced Reproductive Chicago-IVF.
But money can’t be a donor’s only motivation, as “any donor who gets involved specifically for the compensation soon realizes that the time and what’s required of her aren’t worth it,” said Nazca Fontes, founder of Chicago-based Conceivabilities, which pays donors $7,000.
Even Doeing, who was in it for altruistic reasons, had moments when she wished she could rewind.
As the surgery approached, her belly felt bloated, sore and stretched, and she suffered painful cramps. She hyperstimulated, meaning her body over-responded to the hormones, which can be a serious condition that in extreme cases can result in death.
Doeing, a donor through Advanced Reproductive Chicago-IVF, does not know if the 10 eggs removed from her ovaries ever produced a baby, as that information is withheld from donors.
“My mother’s a little weird about it, knowing that she might have a grandchild somewhere,” Doeing said.
But Doeing doesn’t fret about it. She was required to undergo psychological screening before being selected to make sure she could handle the procedure and the aftermath.
“There’s a misconception that the fertility industry is targeting financially strapped young women or those who don’t fully understand,” said Fontes, who accepts only about 10 percent of the applicants she gets. “But donors have to demonstrate that they have the capacity to understand what they’re embarking upon and accept the ramifications.”
———-
aelejalderuiz@tribune.com
– – –
CLINICAL TRIALS AREN’T EASY MONEY
Those too squeamish or short-haired to sell their eggs, sperm, plasma or hair might consider participating in clinical trials.
Northwestern University, for example, is offering $100 to participants in a six-month study examining the role of soy in preventing breast cancer.
With ads plastered on the CTA and in several magazines, researchers hope to enroll 130 people over the next two years, and so far have 35, said project coordinator Christie Babinski.
Trials searching for healthy subjects can range from innocuous sleep surveys to risky experiments that test the safety and side effects of cancer medications. In these latter trials, setting payment can be tricky because subjects might be lured in for a huge sum despite their better judgment.
“It’s generally deemed to be coercive to pay them enormous amounts of money,” said Mary Jane Welch, director of human subjects protection at Rush University Medical Center.
Though rare, healthy subjects have become violently ill and even died in clinical trials, Welch said, so participants should be well aware of what they’re getting into.
— Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz
– – –
SPARE PARTS, SPARE CHANGE
Think your body is a temple? It can also make a nice piggybank. Here are some ways to cash in.
Eggs
Pay: $2,000-$8,000 per donation cycle, though some ads offer much more for donors with particular traits, like high SAT scores or musical talent.
Procedure: Psychological evaluation and medical testing to make sure you are a suitable donor, then daily hormone injections and regular visits to the doctor for blood tests and ultrasounds. A needle is inserted into the ovaries to retrieve several eggs once they’re ready. You have to sign a legal contract agreeing that the recipients are the legal parents of any child produced with your egg. The whole process can last four to six months.
What it’s for: Enabling infertile women to give birth. The donor eggs are mingled with sperm in a test tube, and a resulting embryo is implanted in the recipient.
Who’s eligible: It depends on the fertility center, but usually women between 20 and 32 who are physically healthy and have no history of infertility problems. Women who have given birth before are preferred.
For more info: conceiveabilities.com; chicago-ivf.com
Sperm
Pay: $50-$100 per accepted semen sample
Procedure: Screening–which includes blood and urine testing to check for substance abuse and disease, as well as test semen samples to show you have a high enough sperm count to be a donor–can last up to six weeks. Suitable donors then are asked to donate sperm at least once per week for at least six months, during which time they also get routine blood draws.
What it’s for: Impregnating women, sometimes through direct insemination and sometimes to create an embryo in a test tube.
Who they want: It varies, but usually healthy, educated men between 18 and 35 years old with high sperm counts and no history of genetic illness.
For more info: midwestspermbank.com
Hair
Pay: Anywhere from $200 to $2,000, depending on the length and quality of the hair.
Procedure: Get a hair cut.
What it’s for: To make wigs and extensions, or for dolls or jewelry.
Who they want: Most coveted is long, healthy hair that hasn’t been dyed.
For more info: thehairtrader.com; hairwork.com. To donate rather than sell it, go to locksoflove.org.
Plasma
Pay: $20-$30 per session
Procedure: Donors get a physical on their first visit and are tested for illnesses like HIV and hepatitis on every visit. For about an hour, donors give blood. Through plasmapheresis, a machine separates the plasma (the liquid) part of the blood from the cellular part. The cellular part is returned to the donor’s body with a sterile saline solution.
What it’s for: To make medicines that treat hemophilia, immune system deficiencies, rabies, measles, shock and burns, among other disorders.
Who they want: Anyone 18 years old and up, weighing at least 110 pounds.
For more info: www.interstatebloodbank.com; www.zlbplasma.com. To donate blood rather than sell it, try chicagoredcross.org.
Clinical trials
Pay: Depending on the trial, could be a few hundred dollars or a few thousand dollars.
Procedure: Varies, but usually involves regular visits to a research center for testing during the duration of the trial (several months).
What it’s for: Medical research. Many of the trials seeking healthy subjects are Phase I trials aiming to test the safety of experimental drugs (they are called Phase I because they represent the first time the drugs are being tested on humans). Most Phase II and III trials aim to test the efficacy of the drugs, so they are looking for subjects who have the condition the drugs are meant to treat.
Who they want: Depends on study.
For more info: centerwatch.com; clinicaltrials.gov
— Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz
