Egg donor compensation in spotlight of Sherman Antitrust Act lawsuit
An antitrust class-action lawsuit alleges price-fixing in egg donor compensation. However, fertility specialist Dr. Norbert Gleicher explains that egg donors are paid for their time and effort, not for their eggs. Dr. Gleicher points out that it is questionable that guidelines for compensation for time and effort would qualify as "price-fixing" under the Sherman Antitrust Act.
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May 19, 2011 (New York, NY) - An antitrust lawsuit regarding egg donor compensation, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, named the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), Society for Assisted Reproductive Technologies (SART) and a San Francisco-based fertility center as defendant, according to an email that ASRM sent to its membership on May 9, 2011.
The plaintiff, Lindsay Kamakahi, alleged in a class action suit that ASRM has been price-fixing compensations for egg donors, violating the Sherman Antitrust Act, since the organization issued Ethics Committee Guideline on compensation for oocyte donors in 2007.
The Center for Human Reproduction (CHR), a leading fertility center in New York, NY, with one of the largest and most diverse egg donor programs in the U.S., points out that there are a number of crucially important issues in regards to egg donation, often misunderstood by the public:
