Illegal egg-donation business covets girls from China’s top two universities: PKU and THU
From Beijing News
A black market controlled by multiple illegal egg brokers and agencies is booming in Beijing. The entire chain comprises several links, including screening, physical examination, egg extraction and surrogate finding. They target universities and colleges for potential donors, and are willing to pay as much as 30,000 yuan (US$4,760), which is more than half of Beijing’s average annual income (50,415), if the egg donor is a student at the famed Peking University or Tsinghua University.
A couple (on the left) looks at profiles and selects their egg donor with help from brokers (on the right).
Besides academic credentials, blood type, height and weight, place of birth, and even their eyelids – single or double, can factor into the selection.
Single eyelids, or “Asian eyes,” vs. double eyelids.
On August 3, a post was published by “Momo” in a discussion group called “Part-time jobs and internship for Beijing college students” created on Renren.com, or the Chinese Facebook, looking for egg donors, “The applicant should be at least 163 cm in height without shoes, have double eyelids…The pay is 30,000 yuan.” It goes so far as to note “Please go away if you are not a student of PKU or THU.”
After the reporter, masqueraded as a college girl, got in touch with “Momo” on the internet, “Momo” sent her an application form for her to fill out. Information requested includes height, blood type and menstruation cycle. Four photos from various angles, and photocopies of government issued I.D. and student I.D. are also required.
“Our clients ask specifically for students from PKU or THU. Right now, no one wants any (egg donor) from your school. If you really want to donate, you will have to wait, and the pay will not be that high,” Momo told the reporter over the phone after she submitted her materials, “Besides, these clients only want girls with double eyelids. No single eyelid.”
According to Momo, there are many similar agencies hunting on the internet for eggs. What they do is matching donors with clients in need. During the entire process, the giving and the receiving ends will not have any communication or contact.
A Beijing-based agency named Sunshine Surrogacy Network is full of high-sounding words in its advertisement: “We help families with fertility problems all over the country. At the same time we also help many female college students who are in financial difficulties.”
A man in charge at Sunshine Surrogacy Network, who called himself Li Chen, said, the company was launched seven years ago. It provides a one-package service, including finding surrogate mothers, brokering eggs, arranging hospital admissions, setting up paternity tests and assisting in getting birth certificates.
While Li Chen prefers to refer to egg donors as ‘volunteers’ and the payments as ‘Nutrition expenses,’ he refuses to sign any formal contract with an egg donor.
“As a student from a top university, you probably already know that this business is still illegal in our country,” Li said to the reporter. He said that in order to protect the safety and privacy of both parties, no agreement in writing is made.
The ‘nutrition expense’ will be paid on the day of the egg extraction surgery. “Generally it is 5,000 yuan (US$795). Even though you are from a great university, there are quite many volunteers from universities in Beijing now, and this offer is good enough.”
College girls sit at a weekly meeting organized by an egg-brokering agency in a café and listen to a broker.
Egg donors are taken to a hospital for medical tests.
On the afternoon of October 22, Li Chen told the reporter to come to a weekly meeting where prospective parents cherry-pick egg donors.
In the café in downtown Beijing, a handful of girls in their late teens sat across the tables from couples in their 40s and 50s. Couples, wearing a sullen look throughout the process, coldly eyed each girl and murmured to their spouses every now and then. Whenever they needed additional information about a girl, a broker with materials stepped in and answered questions.
‘Volunteers’, on the other hand, seldom talked, and seemed very bored. Some of them played with their cellphones, whereas others simple rested their chins on their hands and idled. The reporter tried to talk to the girls and ask them about the schools they are from, but they were very cautious and reticent.
Li Chen took a picture of the reporter. “This is for clients who may want a closer look at you.”
By 3 p.m., almost all girls and customers had left. “Your biggest weakness is your single eyelid,” Li Chen told the reporter that she had fallen short.
However, on October 29, the reporter was invited to another meeting set by Sunshine Surrogacy Network. This time, it was much bigger, with more than 20 ‘volunteers’ and 30 clients. Each client had to pay 300 yuan admission fee in order to get in.
And the clients’ requirements were much more varied and explicit. Some want students from a specific university. Some look for fair-skinned girls with double eyelids. Some couples, because both have single eyelids, only accept eggs from single eyelid girls in order for the future child to look more like theirs. Some stress “No blood Type A. Only B or O” to avoid the drama in case the child find out that they are not biological parents. Some from northwestern China want a girl from the South to lower the chance of consanguineous marriages for their future child.
Two days later, Li Chen called the reporter, “You have been selected. Inform me as soon as your period comes. Text me if it is deep into the night. We will set up a body check for you.” He further reminded her to drink more soy milk and eat food high in protein, and avoid staying up late in order not to fail the medical test. “
“Text me before you call me,” Li Qing (pseudonym) said, “I now have a boyfriend. It is very inconvenient to talk about these things.” Li Qing, 20, is currently a student at a university in Beijing. In early 2010, she donated her eggs with arrangements from a broker.
She recalled that after she passed the medical test, she received hormone-boosting shots. “One shot per day for eight days on end,” Li Qing said. She did not feel differently during those days, except that her arm hurt a bit from the shots.
Then a needle was inserted through her vagina into her ovary to extract her eggs. Eggs were frozen until they are to be combined with sperms. Li Qing said she actually did not fell well during the procedure and in the next few days. She got her pay beforehand.
“I don’t regret it,” Li Qing said. But she said she will never tell about it to anyone close to her. She has no idea where her eggs have gone. “I don’t want to have any idea either. I want to gradually forget about it,” she said.
Chinese Ministry of Health bans any form of commercial egg donation and extraction. Only eggs from women undergoing human assisted reproduction left over from IVF treatment can be used. Simply put, egg donors have to be women who want a test tube baby. Only their excess eggs can be legally donated to those in need.
According to the price list from brokers for prospective parents, one has to pay the broker 60,000 to 100,000 yuan, including 8,000 yuan as brokerage, 40,000 to 80,000 yuan as payments for the donor, and about 10,000 for the fertility clinic.
However, brokers normally pay a donor 5,000 yuan, unless she is from PKU or THU. The rest goes into the broker’s own pocket.
“But that is not enough compared to what the broker does,” said Wang Chao (pseudonym), who has been in the egg-brokering business for over 8 years. He said that because it is illegal, it is necessary to grease the palms of fertility doctors, nurses and anyone in the know. “I heard that doctors can make several million a year by being in part of this business,” Wang said.
Brokers tell each and every ‘volunteer’ that egg donation is safe and does no harm at all. Several women who have successfully donated eggs also reported ‘no abnormal sign from the body.’
But according to Dr. Xue Qing, a gynecologist at Peking University Women and Children’s Hospital, egg retrieval procedure involves stimulating production with hormones. It carries risks for donors and may cause complications, such as abdominal bloating, chest pain from ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome as the result of reaction to the hormones, and, in the most severe cases, death.
Most experts believe the percentage of Chinese couples suffering from infertility is rising and is around 10 percent of total couples. Wang Chao believed that very few of them have the legal access to eggs. “They should expand the pool of eligible donors. Establish an egg bank, just like a sperm bank,” Wang Chao said.
Dr. Xue Qing, while acknowledging the statistics, said that only very few of the 10% needs egg donation. Most of people with fertility problems can be treated with either drugs or medical surgery.
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