Hunting for "Good" Eggs in Eastern Europe

Suzanne Leigh's article, "Hunting for Good Human Eggs", examines the work of Dr. Sanford Rosenberg, founder of GlobalARTusa, an organization that performs IVF and reduces its cost by creating an international egg donor program. Leigh explains that the usual IVF process, from finding a donor or agency to waiting for results, which at times come back unsuccessful, can cost close to $30,000.

Rosenberg's organization allows Americans to select Romanian egg donors from an online database. Sperm is then sent to Romania where IVF is performed in a lab in Bucharest, the capital of the country. Once the procedure is complete the frozen embryos are delivered to the United States. The cost for 6 eggs, or half an ovulation cycle, is $8,000, or one can buy 12 eggs, an entire ovulation cycle, for $13,000. Many critcs feel that the GlobalARTusa program is unreliable because it does not verify the credentials of the women who are donating.
However, to this declaration, Rosenberg rebuts that the women are college educated girls in their twenties who are absolutely screened before approval.

Leigh concludes with a quote from the doctor who simply states that he wanted to help women by creating a program that can get them pregnant without paying exorbitant sums of money to make it happen.

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