California Stem Cell Agency Delays Decision on Expanding the Market in Women’s Eggs

A committee of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has voted to postpone a decision on a proposal that would undermine protections for women who provide eggs for research by allowing researchers to use stem cell lines created with eggs for which women have been paid. CIRM’s leadership and staff had apparently intended that the Standards Working Group – the committee responsible for setting and upholding ethical requirements – would approve the broad policy change at its Wednesday meeting, and that the agency’s governing board would then adopt it the following day.

But that plan was scuttled following strong objections voiced by women’s health and public interest organizations, including the Center for Genetics and Society, and by several members of the Standards Working Group. CGS, together with Pro-Choice Alliance for Responsible Research (PCARR), Alliance for Humane Biotechnology, and Our Bodies Ourselves, spoke at the meeting and submitted a memo summarizing the proposal’s numerous problematic aspects.

The push by CIRM leadership is one of two ongoing efforts in California to gut protections for women who provide eggs for research by creating a commercial market for them. The other is AB926, a bill sponsored by the fertility industry that has been approved by the legislature and now awaits Governor Jerry Brown’s decision to sign it, veto it, or let it become law without his signature.

Currently, California – like many countries – allows women who provide eggs for research to be reimbursed for travel, lost wages, child care and other expenses connected to the egg retrieval process, but not to be paid beyond that. Objections to expanding the market for eggs center on the significant but woefully under-studied health risks of the egg retrieval process, what bioethicists term the “undue inducement” of offering thousands of dollars to young women to undergo it, and the challenge to the very possibility of “informed consent” when risks are inadequately known.

The limitation on paying women to provide eggs for research was established twice in California. It was included in the 2004 ballot measure that created CIRM, the state’s $3-billion publicly funded stem cell program. The policy was extended to cover researchers not funded by CIRM in 2006 in a law that was authored by a Democratic Senator who was an early champion of embryonic stem cell research, supported by CGS and other women’s health and public interest groups, and passed by both houses of the state legislature almost unanimously.

AB926, now on the Governor’s desk, would reverse the 2006 law, allowing scientists to recruit women for the invasive and risky egg retrieval procedure with offers of up to $10,000 or more. Even if AB 926 becomes law, however, it would not override the law that prevents CIRM-funded researchers from using agency dollars to pay women directly. That’s why the agency’s leadership wants the Standards Working Group to approve what amounts to a giant loophole. Allowing CIRM grantees to use cell lines created with eggs paid for by non-CIRM funds would condone and encourage the practice and the commercial market.

With Wednesday’s vote by the Standards Working Group to delay consideration of the proposal, the next move is up to Governor Brown.

Previously on Biopolitical Times:

• California "Pay-for-Eggs" Bill on the Governor’s Desk
• Update: California Bill Would Overturn Protections for Women Providing Eggs for Research 
• California Lawmakers Consider Paying Women to Provide Eggs for Research
• Eggs, wombs and the economy: Hard times fuel a buyers’ market
• The New Push for Eggs for Stem Cell Research in California (2008)