A 15 year old Israeli law that has barred all women, other than those undergoing infertility treatment, from donating their ova will be replaced soon by a detailed law that actually encourages such donation.
The original law was instituted to prevent the sale of ova. Health officials and legislators thought that permitting donations only by those women whose ova were being removed for in vitro fertilisation would prevent the illegal sales of eggs. But the law had the effect of severely restricting the supply of donated eggs, with the result that about 2000 women in Israel are now waiting for donated ova.
The shortage even led to the investigation of two leading Israeli gynaecologists over allegations that they took ova without permission from women undergoing in vitro fertilisation in public hospitals and gave them to patients undergoing treatment in their private clinics (BMJ 2000;320:1425).
The health minister, Nissim Dahan, has now given the official go-ahead for a government sponsored bill that should alleviate or even eliminate the shortage of donated ova to infertile women who lack their own.
The bill, which should be passed by parliament on its first reading by May, will be based on highly detailed recommendations that were made by a ministry appointed committee that prepared them over a period of 11 months and were endorsed by leading rabbis.
The 10 member committee included six physicians, one of whom was its chairman, Dr Mordechai Halperin of Jerusalem's Schlesinger Institute for Jewish Medical Ethics. The committee recommended that only Israeli women aged 20 to 35 may donate ova—and only to other Israeli citizens who are no older than 51.
The donor must be unmarried and unrelated to the recipient (except in cases approved by a special committee). If seven babies had already been produced from one woman's eggs, the would-be donor would not be able to give any more. The donor and recipient must be of the same religion unless the two women have agreed otherwise. The donation must be anonymous for both the donor and the recipient except if the committee approves an unusual case.
Donors would not be paid for their eggs, but would get about £1400-£2100 ($2000-$3000) as compensation for their time, loss of income, and discomfort. If the donor's health was damaged (for example, she became infertile) she would be compensated by insurance.
Dr Halperin, who knows of no detailed legislation of this kind elsewhere in the world, said that if the rules were carefully followed, no problems of Jewish or other religious law should result, especially as a computerised registry—controlled by a judge—would store genetic information. This would prevent in vitro fertilisation for a couple where a man had unknowingly married his biological sister. It would also provide children born as a result of ova donations with data on any potentially harmful inherited conditions. Anyone over the age of 18 will be entitled to ask the registry if he or she was born as a result of egg donation.