Do the cloning experiment egg donors appreciate their place in history?

Women usually experience moodiness, headaches, bloating, tiredness and tender breasts from the hormone treatment. Some researchers have linked ovarian cysts, enlarged ovaries, ovarian abscess and septicaemia and constant bleeding with hyper-stimulation. About six percent develop major life threatening complications warranting prolonged hospital treatment.

As cloning for destructive experimentation on embryos becomes more widespread, scientists will need to get their hands on untold numbers of eggs. A US source estimates that if embryonic stem cells were to provide up to 1.7 million ‘therapies’ per year, 5 – 8 million ova would be needed each year. (This estimate generously assumes that it would only take between three and five embryos to produce one embryonic stem cell culture - as the Korean experiment demonstrates it took a lot more embryos than that).

One way of getting so many eggs would be to make women feel it's their duty to give them. Women who have acted as surrogate mothers and later regretted relinquishing the child they carried have described the emotional pulling power of this feeling. Many women would feel obliged to give their eggs for cloning procedures to “help others.”

Australian women could be called into service in the not too distant future. As Professor Alan Trounson of the National Stem Cell Centre said, “Australian researchers might want to make their own cloned human embryos, rather than rely on collaboration with overseas teams, to further this research.”

This is not about reproductive freedom but reproductive commodification. Its negative consequences for women are profound.