Media Blog- PGD/PGS
CHR Blog: International Egg Trade
Israeli newspapers report the detention by Romanian authorities for up to 29 days of two Israeli physicians, Harry Miron and his son, Yair Miron, under the suspicion of trading illegally in human eggs.
Both are the owners of SABYC Medical Center in Bucharest, the Romanian capital, which specializes in infertility services. Initially 30 people were allegedly arrested, but most were released after interrogations. Two additional Israeli citizens, Prof. Nathan Lewit and Dr. Genia Siskind were prohibited from leaving the country in preparation of further questioning by the authorities. Dr. Lewit is a fertility specialist from the Israeli town of Haifa and Dr. Siskind is the embryology laboratory manager at his IVF center.
Further details are sparse, except for the fact that a spokesman for the authorities claims that the same medical clinic was already in 2002 involved in similar irregularities. What exactly the Israeli physicians are being accused of remains, however, as of this point, unknown.
By way of background, it is well known within the IVF community that eggs and oocyte donors from mostly Eastern European countries not infrequently cross borders. Indeed, over the years, on a number of occasions, CHR has been approached with offers of "cheap" eggs and/or egg donors from countries like Romania, the Ukraine and elsewhere.
Such cross-border traffic can take various formats: Some centers fly egg donors in because, considering the differences in donor fees, even including travel expenses, such donors are still highly cost-effective. Other centers obtain oocytes, cryopreserved them locally and fly them in tanks to their destination countries. A third solution involves two-way traffic: the husband's semen is flown, cryopreserved, to the egg donor's location, thawed out and used to fertilize donor eggs locally. The resultant embryos are then transported back to where the couple lives and transferred into the recipient woman's uterus.
CHR, of course, for legal, medical and ethical reasons, has always refused to participate in such cross-border shenanigans. Other centers both in the U.S. and abroad have not hesitated and the above noted episode appears to reflect this fact. It behooves the profession to set ethical, as well as legal, guidelines for cross-border procurement of oocytes.
Media contact: 212-994-4400 x.4491 CHR's Media Blog is a compilation of potential story ideas gathered from infertility-related news, our research, and our opinion to facilitate open communication with the public on this increasingly relevant field of medicine.
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