July 2, 2007

scientists comment on egg donation announcement

The news of the first mother-to-daughter egg donation was announced at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. A 35-year-old woman in Montreal made the decision to freeze her eggs so that her daughter, who has Turner’s syndrome, could use them later in life if she wished.

Dr Richard Kennedy, spokesperson for the British Fertility Society and infertility specialist at University Hospital Coventry, said:

“Technically this story is not particularly interesting – all the techniques have been used before. The interesting angle is the ethical issues that may be thrown up by a mother donating eggs for the potential use by her daughter in the future. However, the ethics of this situation have been discussed and explored and are not particularly different to an egg donation from any other known related donor.

“Here is a mother who has the capacity to do something to help her daughter have a child. This altruistic behaviour is not dissimilar to the scenario where a parent donates a kidney to a child. Where this situation differs from other egg donation arrangements is that the mother knows that her child has Turner’s syndrome, so she knows from an early age that her daughter will be sterile. Thus this gives the mother the opportunity to donate eggs to her daughter when usually the arrangement works in the opposite direction. She can offer this gift before she is too old to donate eggs.

“The daughter’s only option to get pregnant is to use donated eggs. In this case, instead of using eggs from an unknown donor, she will get the opportunity to know the source.

“Although this means the resulting offspring will be similar in genetics, an unrelated sperm will be used – and this means that the offspring will not be a true sister.”