Is Singapore pushing the payment boundary?
Posted by Jesse Reynolds November 11, 2008
Biopolitical Times
A headline out of Singapore last week stated, "OK To Compensate Egg Donors," coming just a few days after one that warned, "Kidney law to change." In both stories, the Ministry of Health is considering permitting some financial compensation to donors of eggs for research and of kidneys, respectively. And in both cases, the Ministry asserts that the amounts of compensation will not be large enough to act as an inducement.
The Ministry is treading a thin line here. International and national prohibitions on organ sales are well established as being exploitative and coercive, despite black markets and a recent push for opening the market (1, 2, 3 [PDF]). The logic behind eggs is similar, but less ingrained in policy. Selling them for any purpose, for example, is perfectly legal in most of the United States.
The report regarding eggs from the Ministry's Bioethics Advisory Committee is clear: The extraction of eggs poses real health risks, including potential death. The commercialization of eggs is wrong and to be avoided. In fact, the Committee rejects "egg sharing" arrangements, in which a woman undergoing assisted fertility treatment provides some of her eggs for research in exchange for a discount, such as those in the UK as amounting to payment.
Whereas existing Singapore policy allows reimbursement for direct expenses, the new proposal would permit compensation for lost wages and time. The former is consistent with a policy that the altruistic egg provider should be "no better off, nor any worse off." But paying for time is another matter. Isn't this equivalent as hiring someone? And how are payments for time to be calculated so that they are not inducements for, say, the unemployed?
A year ago, I would have worried that, by lowering the bar, this proposed policy would have put pressure on other jurisdictions to join in a race to the bottom. But with the continued lack of success of cloning-based stem cell research, which would use the eggs, and the frequent strides in the alternative methods of cellular reprogramming, I am skeptical if others would bother fighting for such a policy.
The Ministry is treading a thin line here. International and national prohibitions on organ sales are well established as being exploitative and coercive, despite black markets and a recent push for opening the market (1, 2, 3 [PDF]). The logic behind eggs is similar, but less ingrained in policy. Selling them for any purpose, for example, is perfectly legal in most of the United States.
The report regarding eggs from the Ministry's Bioethics Advisory Committee is clear: The extraction of eggs poses real health risks, including potential death. The commercialization of eggs is wrong and to be avoided. In fact, the Committee rejects "egg sharing" arrangements, in which a woman undergoing assisted fertility treatment provides some of her eggs for research in exchange for a discount, such as those in the UK as amounting to payment.
Whereas existing Singapore policy allows reimbursement for direct expenses, the new proposal would permit compensation for lost wages and time. The former is consistent with a policy that the altruistic egg provider should be "no better off, nor any worse off." But paying for time is another matter. Isn't this equivalent as hiring someone? And how are payments for time to be calculated so that they are not inducements for, say, the unemployed?
A year ago, I would have worried that, by lowering the bar, this proposed policy would have put pressure on other jurisdictions to join in a race to the bottom. But with the continued lack of success of cloning-based stem cell research, which would use the eggs, and the frequent strides in the alternative methods of cellular reprogramming, I am skeptical if others would bother fighting for such a policy.
