From the Daily Mail Online: Human Egg to be Raffled in IVF Promotion by David Derbyshire
Fertility doctors offering a human egg as first prize in a raffle were last night accused of commercialising the miracle of life.
One woman will win the chance to select their ideal donor egg based on its mother's profession, ethnic background, hair colour, qualifications and upbringing.
As part of the free IVF cycle and egg prize - worth an estimated £13,000 - the winner of a raffle in London will also be able to view childhood pictures of potential donors before choosing one.
The treatment will take place in America to get around British fertility laws.
Critics have condemned the contest, intended to promote an international IVF scheme, as a 'deplorable' commercial venture.
After the lottery was revealed on Mothering Sunday, Josephine Quintavalle, of think tank Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: 'The capacity of the IVF industry to commodify human life reaches a new low with this latest deplorable initiative.
'Imagine a child one day finding out that he or she came into being thanks to such a blatantly commercial initiative.'
Organisers hope the event on Wednesday will promote a programme run by the Genetics & IVF Institute in Virginia and the London Bridge Centre over here.
Under a deal struck between the two clinics last year, infertile British women can be directed to the U.S. clinic where donated eggs are on offer from American university- educated women or students aged 19 to 32.
Unlike in Britain, where donors are paid no more than £250 in expenses, the American donors can get up to £6,600 a time.
[...]Defending the raffle, he added: 'This is how Americans do it - in order to attract people to seminars they offer one free treatment for people to come.'
'I don't see why it should go down badly at all. People should welcome the idea of having access to a high quality service.'
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority said the raffle, and the tie-up with the U.S. clinic, was 'perfectly legal'. A spokesman said: 'It is bypassing the rules because people can be paid for egg donation in America and eggs are often donated anonymously.'
And so the latest example why in vitro fertilization is an intrinsic evil - the dehumanization of another person. Utterly contemptible.
I'm beginning to think that things must have been freakin' awful in Noah's time...
