BailJumper
01-10-2007, 06:31 AM
A San Antonio-based company is attracting national attention by touting itself as the first commercial dealer of ready-made embryos, offering prospective parents the chance to view childhood pictures of the egg and sperm donors and browse detailed information about their looks, health, personality, education and family history.
Critics are condemning the business, saying the Abraham Center of Life LLC and its founder, Jennalee Ryan, are pushing the ethical envelope of reproductive medicine and treating children as commodities.
But Ryan, who operates the company out of her home in the exclusive Dominion neighborhood, said she's simply bringing together services already available to prospective parents.
Couples long have been able to have embryos created for them if they need both eggs and sperm. They also can "adopt" embryos that are left over at fertility clinics.
"What I'm doing is nothing new, other than I'm commercializing the process," said Ryan, who has a background in marketing and adoptions but not a college degree.
"I have to ask myself: 'Is it ethical for me to do this or is it ethical for me not to do this, given that I have the experience and the means?'" she asked. "I deal with these people so desperate to have a baby and I feel like it's my moral duty."
Dr. Robert Brzyski, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Texas Health Science Center, questioned why couples would resort to a broker like Ryan — who has no medical skills — to contribute to an already expensive process.
"It is another middleman," Brzyski said.
Ryan describes herself as a facilitator who, under the umbrella of the Abraham Center of Life, offers a full range of services, including frozen embryo donation, surrogate arrangements and adoptions.
Embryos are $2,500 each and the total cost of each attempt at pregnancy would be between $10,000 and $15,000 — which she says is much less than the standard cost for either in vitro fertilization or adoption.
'I sell a service'
Ryan says said she found a young woman in Arizona willing to supply eggs, then she purchased sperm from an online sperm bank. That resulted, she said, in 26 embryos that were created by a New York medical fertility specialist whom she won't identify.
So far, a single woman from California and a married woman from Canada now each are pregnant from that batch, she said. She also declined to identify them.
"I put the whole thing together and they create the embryos," Ryan said. "So I don't sell embryos — I sell a service."
Ryan has been accused of helping create designer babies.
The donors to the Fairfax sperm bank she contracts with all have college degrees, while her egg donor is Anglo and in her 20s. On her Web site, she notes: "In most cases, we have detailed health information and descriptions of the genetic parents of the embryos. In many cases, there are photographs available as well."
"To me, it's a no-brainer — everyone wants pretty and smart children," she said in an interview. "No one has ever come to me and said, 'I want an unintelligent, ugly child.'"
While many fertility experts acknowledged Ryan's services aren't that different from those already offered at fertility clinics, other medical specialists and ethicists say they are disturbed by the development.
"It's a bad idea," George Annas, an attorney and ethicist with Boston University's School of Public Health. "It is too close to buying and selling children."
Grossly misrepresented
Others downplayed the significance of Ryan's business.
Thomas Pool, scientific director at the Fertility Center of San Antonio, said he sees maybe one couple every two or three years that need both a sperm and an egg donor.
That Ryan claims to be the only such service in the nation offering several services under one roof — providing egg donors, traditional and gestational surrogacy, frozen embryo donation and adoption services — says more about marketing than anything else, said Sean Tipton, spokesman for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
"Patients who have needed a donated embryo have been able to get them at fertility clinics for 15 years," he said. "So it's not clear what's unique about this service."
Ryan recently moved to Texas from California, where she ran an adoption business, Abagail's Silver Spoon Adoptions, which she said is one of the largest in the nation. The company, which operates in both states, provides the bulk of her income, she said.
But representatives from two top San Antonio adoption agencies, Methodist Mission Home and Adoption Affiliates, said they are unfamiliar with Ryan and her business.
"I've been around for 30 years doing adoptions and I've never heard of her," said Jan Couve, a licensed social worker who is the executive director of Adoption Affiliates.
According to Ryan, her adoption company in California is less an agency and more a service that facilitates adoptions, while the Texas incarnation is only an adoption advertising service. She said California law allows adoption facilitators that introduce pregnant women to adoptive parents for a fee but Texas doesn't.
Couve said facilitators represent the more murky world of unregulated adoptions. Facilitators fly under the radar, attempting to set up adoptions quickly and without conducting many of the checks policymakers have said are necessary to protect potential parents and adopted children, she said.
"Anyone can become a facilitator — they get themselves a Web site and they're off and going," she said.
Oversight of the selection of egg and sperm donors and creation of embryos exists, but it's "a complicated patchwork" of state and federal regulations regarding reproductive medicine, Tipton said. States license doctors and medical professionals involved and the Food and Drug Administration approves drugs and devices used in the process. The FDA also regulates the medical screenings needed when any types of reproductive tissues are donated, he said.
But the government so far hasn't made major policy decisions on the more personalized parts of the process, he said.
"What's not regulated are individual patients' reproductive decisions such as deciding who gets to have kids, how and why," he said.
Enter third parties — egg and sperm donor brokers — such as Ryan. Tipton said his society keeps track of reputable brokers for their clinics and Ryan's name is not on that list.
Ryan acknowledged that she's been successful both in adoption and embryo service facilitating because so far the government has not found one comprehensive way to regulate the niche.
"A lot of this is so new and I think our federal government is busy doing other things," she said. "Hey, this isn't my life. If they say I can't do it anymore, no problem. I'll just find another mountain to climb."
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Ah, let the debate begin.
Critics are condemning the business, saying the Abraham Center of Life LLC and its founder, Jennalee Ryan, are pushing the ethical envelope of reproductive medicine and treating children as commodities.
But Ryan, who operates the company out of her home in the exclusive Dominion neighborhood, said she's simply bringing together services already available to prospective parents.
Couples long have been able to have embryos created for them if they need both eggs and sperm. They also can "adopt" embryos that are left over at fertility clinics.
"What I'm doing is nothing new, other than I'm commercializing the process," said Ryan, who has a background in marketing and adoptions but not a college degree.
"I have to ask myself: 'Is it ethical for me to do this or is it ethical for me not to do this, given that I have the experience and the means?'" she asked. "I deal with these people so desperate to have a baby and I feel like it's my moral duty."
Dr. Robert Brzyski, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Texas Health Science Center, questioned why couples would resort to a broker like Ryan — who has no medical skills — to contribute to an already expensive process.
"It is another middleman," Brzyski said.
Ryan describes herself as a facilitator who, under the umbrella of the Abraham Center of Life, offers a full range of services, including frozen embryo donation, surrogate arrangements and adoptions.
Embryos are $2,500 each and the total cost of each attempt at pregnancy would be between $10,000 and $15,000 — which she says is much less than the standard cost for either in vitro fertilization or adoption.
'I sell a service'
Ryan says said she found a young woman in Arizona willing to supply eggs, then she purchased sperm from an online sperm bank. That resulted, she said, in 26 embryos that were created by a New York medical fertility specialist whom she won't identify.
So far, a single woman from California and a married woman from Canada now each are pregnant from that batch, she said. She also declined to identify them.
"I put the whole thing together and they create the embryos," Ryan said. "So I don't sell embryos — I sell a service."
Ryan has been accused of helping create designer babies.
The donors to the Fairfax sperm bank she contracts with all have college degrees, while her egg donor is Anglo and in her 20s. On her Web site, she notes: "In most cases, we have detailed health information and descriptions of the genetic parents of the embryos. In many cases, there are photographs available as well."
"To me, it's a no-brainer — everyone wants pretty and smart children," she said in an interview. "No one has ever come to me and said, 'I want an unintelligent, ugly child.'"
While many fertility experts acknowledged Ryan's services aren't that different from those already offered at fertility clinics, other medical specialists and ethicists say they are disturbed by the development.
"It's a bad idea," George Annas, an attorney and ethicist with Boston University's School of Public Health. "It is too close to buying and selling children."
Grossly misrepresented
Others downplayed the significance of Ryan's business.
Thomas Pool, scientific director at the Fertility Center of San Antonio, said he sees maybe one couple every two or three years that need both a sperm and an egg donor.
That Ryan claims to be the only such service in the nation offering several services under one roof — providing egg donors, traditional and gestational surrogacy, frozen embryo donation and adoption services — says more about marketing than anything else, said Sean Tipton, spokesman for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
"Patients who have needed a donated embryo have been able to get them at fertility clinics for 15 years," he said. "So it's not clear what's unique about this service."
Ryan recently moved to Texas from California, where she ran an adoption business, Abagail's Silver Spoon Adoptions, which she said is one of the largest in the nation. The company, which operates in both states, provides the bulk of her income, she said.
But representatives from two top San Antonio adoption agencies, Methodist Mission Home and Adoption Affiliates, said they are unfamiliar with Ryan and her business.
"I've been around for 30 years doing adoptions and I've never heard of her," said Jan Couve, a licensed social worker who is the executive director of Adoption Affiliates.
According to Ryan, her adoption company in California is less an agency and more a service that facilitates adoptions, while the Texas incarnation is only an adoption advertising service. She said California law allows adoption facilitators that introduce pregnant women to adoptive parents for a fee but Texas doesn't.
Couve said facilitators represent the more murky world of unregulated adoptions. Facilitators fly under the radar, attempting to set up adoptions quickly and without conducting many of the checks policymakers have said are necessary to protect potential parents and adopted children, she said.
"Anyone can become a facilitator — they get themselves a Web site and they're off and going," she said.
Oversight of the selection of egg and sperm donors and creation of embryos exists, but it's "a complicated patchwork" of state and federal regulations regarding reproductive medicine, Tipton said. States license doctors and medical professionals involved and the Food and Drug Administration approves drugs and devices used in the process. The FDA also regulates the medical screenings needed when any types of reproductive tissues are donated, he said.
But the government so far hasn't made major policy decisions on the more personalized parts of the process, he said.
"What's not regulated are individual patients' reproductive decisions such as deciding who gets to have kids, how and why," he said.
Enter third parties — egg and sperm donor brokers — such as Ryan. Tipton said his society keeps track of reputable brokers for their clinics and Ryan's name is not on that list.
Ryan acknowledged that she's been successful both in adoption and embryo service facilitating because so far the government has not found one comprehensive way to regulate the niche.
"A lot of this is so new and I think our federal government is busy doing other things," she said. "Hey, this isn't my life. If they say I can't do it anymore, no problem. I'll just find another mountain to climb."
--------
Ah, let the debate begin.