Desperate for a baby, infertile mothers are advertising for egg donors on the web. And as this special Mail investigation shows, money-hungry young women are rushing to cash in on their misery
Pick me and you will be getting a winning, and rare, combination of brains and beauty. I am often told I look like Catherine Zeta-Jones, and I've never been anything other than a straight A student. To be blunt, I doubt you will find anybody better...
These are the confident words of Sarah, 26, the proud owner of a first-class English degree from Edinburgh University. She goes on to talk about her size 8 figure, her fluency in French and how widely travelled she is.
It may read like a Miss World contestant's speech, or an online dating profile - but, in fact, Sarah is offering to sell me her eggs illegally for £12,000.
Baby love: The shortage of legal egg donors means a secret trade already exists
She was one of 16 girls who responded when, posing as an infertile women, I placed an advert seeking an egg donor who might be able to help me bypass the UK waiting lists and realise my dream of having a child.
While some of the emails that landed in my inbox were touchingly kind and generous, many were downright grasping, as young women seized the chance to cash in on another woman's misery and misfortune.
Egg donation is perfectly legal, as is advertising for your own donor. However, paying anything more than basic expenses to the donor - capped at £250 - is strictly against the rules. Any IVF clinic that suspects a financial incentive has been offered is duty-bound to refuse treatment.
Many clinics have their own donor egg programmes! , where women are happy to help for purely altruistic reasons.! However , as my investigation was to reveal, there were plenty of others in it purely for the money, and happy to break the law in order to line their own pockets.
Sarah is one such young woman. She sells herself to me with descriptions of her family - all successful high-achievers. To entice me further, she sends me two sultry, model-style snaps of herself.
With her glossy mane of dark hair, pouting lips and sparkling green eyes, it is true that she is strikingly beautiful and does, as boasted, bear an uncanny resemblance to the film star.
As our email conversation continues, it seems clear that Sarah is remarkably well informed of the process and the risks involved in egg donation, and it soon becomes apparent why.
She has done it before. She reveals that she has already acted as an egg donor for a wealthy British couple based in Dubai, and is keen to do so again if
'My cycle produced 24 eggs, so we know that I respond well to treatment,' Sarah says. It's rather disarming to hear a talented young woman talk about her reproductive ability in such a matter-of-fact manner.
'The woman now has a three-month-old son and another five frozen embryos she can use down the line,' she continues. 'They paid me £12,000 an! d I'd be looking for about the same amount again.
'We'l! l have t o get our story straight, though, before we go to the clinic. Last time, I said I was a friend of the family and they didn't question it.'
If Sarah were to donate directly to an IVF clinic, she would not be paid more than £250 - and she knows only too well that her valuable commodity is worth so much more.
In America, where private donors can - quite legally - earn a small fortune, they usually expect to be paid 10 per cent of the agreed sum once they've come to an agreement with the recipient, a further 15 per cent once they have been accepted by the clinic, and the balance on completion of the cycle.
Women who donate their eggs legally in the UK receive their expences at the end of the cycle, but those donating privately would certainly expect a 'goodwill' fee at the very beginning.
Three weeks ago, Professor Lisa Jardine, chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the independent regulator that licences UK fertility clini! cs, called for a debate on whether we should change the present rules and allow egg and sperm donors to be paid.
This would bring us in line with other countries, she said, and address the shortage which means most couples face joining a two-year waiting list for donor eggs.
While many believe that Professor Jardine is right, and that a review is urgently called for, other ethical groups feel payment will lead to an unfair, underground trade where vulnerable people will be targeted and the buyer with the biggest bank account will win.
A business transaction? But the side-effects of egg donation can include kidney disease, blood clots, infertility and even death
But, as my investigation uncovered, the sh! ortage of legal donors means that such a trade already secretl! y exists . I discovered that there is no shortage of hard-up, desperate or some might say greedy people, ready to cash in on the booming fertility business.
I posted my advert on the websites Gumtree and Craigslist, two free online communities. It read: Successful, wealthy businesswoman seeks UK-based egg donor. I am in my early 40s and unable to conceive using my own eggs. As you may be aware, there is a UK shortage and the waiting lists are very long.
I hope that by finding a suitable donor myself, and coming to a private arrangement, I may be able to speed up the process.
I am looking for somebody under 35 who is fit, healthy and educated. Terms to be discussed but, rest assured, you will be well looked after for your time and commitment.
Please email me for further details or with any questions.
Alarmingly, my advert was not the only one of its kind: the London edition of Gumtree had four similar ones. The sheer desperation in the! adverts was heartbreaking. One signed off with the words: 'Please, please help us - we don't know what else we can do.'
As I waited for the replies to come in, I used the time to research exactly what is entailed in becoming an egg donor, and the risks associated with it. All clinics require egg donors to be between 18 and 35 years old, although it is widely accepted that the younger the better.
Any potential donor should be given counselling before undergoing a period of 'down regulating', whereby her own natural cycle will be switched off. The ovaries will then be kick-started with powerful fertility drugs to encourage them to produce a bumper crop of eggs. The eggs will usually be retrieved under general anaesthetic.
Minor side-effects such as bloating, cramps and headaches are fairly common, but the biggest risk to the donor (around 2 per cent) is that of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, where the ovaries react badly to the fertility drugs.
In worst-case scenarios, this can lead to kidney disease, bl! ood clot s, infertility and even death.In other words, it is not something to enter into lightly, although the risk of egg donation appears to be the last thing on the mind of some of the women who contact me.
Hannah is the sort of determined, ambitious and driven young woman who would make any parent proud. She is 23 years old, slim, attractive and in the final year of her law degree at the prestigious London School of Economics. She is also willing to sell me her eggs for £10,000.
Free for all: In America, highly desirable donors can command up to £25,000
'I have lots of debts and am only working weekends at the moment, so anything less than that wouldn't be worth my wh! ile,' she says.
While many may question Sarah's and Hannah's motives and methods of making money, both are absolutely right in knowing the value of their youth and fertility.
In the U.S., where the egg and sperm donation market is a free-for-all, highly desirable donors, like them, are known as 'super donors' and can command fees of up to £25,000. A blonde-haired, blue-eyed egg donor who had graduated from an Ivy League college can pretty much name her price.
This is the sort of nightmare scenario that Josephine Quintavalle, director of Core Ethics, a public interest and lobby group concerned with reproductive techniques, fears most.
She tells me: 'We live in an "I want" society, and a woman with a cheque book wields a great deal of power. We only have to look at the situation in America to understand that.
'It would be a disaster if we offered financial incentives legally in the UK. Who is that most likely to appeal to? Poor and desperate! people, of course. And such people do desperate things, espec! ially in times of economic hardship.
'The majority of the women looking for an egg donor are older. We will have a situation where older, richer women are preying on very young and impressionable girls who may not fully appreciate the risks involved.
'I am in contact with a 31-year-old woman who offered her eggs for donation and suffered ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome as a result. She is now in early menopause and infertile herself. Not only that, she is unable to walk and in a wheelchair.
'She has risked and sacrificed everything - whereas the egg recipient can simply move on to the next donor.
'With the trade in human kidneys, you can at least argue that it will save somebody's life. But to offer money for a woman's eggs is totally immoral.'
Ms Quintavalle's predictions that payment will attract needy and vulnerable people does appear to be true. My next email contact is from Jenny in Bournemouth, who sends a picture which shows a pretty, blo! nde young girl snuggling up to her fiance.
She says: 'We're getting married next spring, and the money would really come in handy. I have no idea what to ask for. It will be years before we can afford to start our own family, so perhaps we can help each other out in the meantime?'
Ellie, from North London, is much more blunt in her approach. 'My partner and I have both recently lost our jobs in the City,' she says. 'There's absolutely nothing out there and we are in real danger of losing our home.
'This is something that I would consider, but only if the money was right. It's great that I can help you out, but, to be honest, the reward would need to be good. I think about £5,000 to £6,000 sounds fair.'
Davina, 21, from Cirencester, is yet another student to contact me. She has thoroughly researched what is involved and asks me to call her to discuss options.
The phone is answered by a polite, well-spoken woman who tells me that she is tryi! ng to become an actress, but is struggling to find work. Her a! gent has advised her that she needs to have new photographs taken and to pay for a professional show reel.
'My only fear would be that my own fertility would be compromised,' confesses Davina. 'But if your clinic would reassure me that I would not be at risk, then I would happily donate.
'It looks like an IVF cycle costs about £4,000 - and as that's, effectively, what I'll be having, it seems like a reasonable amount to expect, and it would be a financial lifeline for me.'
Not surprisingly, many infertile women opt for treatment abroad in places such as Spain, Greece or the Czech Republic, where clinics can pay donors a fee and there are no waiting lists.
One such couple are Nicola and Nigel Dawson from Bracknell, Berkshire, who are now proud parents to 11-month-old twin girls, Mia and Hannah, conceived in Spain thanks to a Spanish egg donor.
Nicola, 35, a project manager with a large multinational company, says: 'I have premature ovarian failure, ! which means my eggs are no longer viable. If legal donors had been available in the UK, then we would have had treatment here.'
Ruth Pellow, a British-trained fertility nurse, runs a company called IVF Treatment Abroad and readily admits that if there wasn't a shortage of donors here she would not be in business.
'Ninety per cent of our clients are from the UK. They turn to us because we can offer them treatment in clinics with no waiting lists and higher success rates.
But Ruth, who set up the egg donation programme at St Bart's Hospital in London, is certain that the lack of donors is nothing to do with not offering decent, legal payment. She blames the 2005 change in the law which removed anonymity from sperm and egg donors, enabling any donor-conceived child to have access to information about the donor once they turned 18.
'I saw it for myself at Bart's,' says Ruth. 'Even before the law changed, when it was only being talked about, the donor! rates dropped by almost 80 per cent.
'I would not be t! otally s urprised to learn that under-the-counter payments happen in the UK. Clinics have good screening processes, but they can have no real way of knowing if money has changed hands if both parties are sticking to a story.'
After dealing with the disturbing demands of Sarah and Hannah, it is a relief to find that there are still wonderfully kind people who are willing to help a stranger for nothing in return. Debbie, a 32-year-old from St Albans, is one such example.
She emails me saying: 'I have finished having my family and would love to help you experience the joys of motherhood. I am not looking for payment - but I will let you buy me a coffee and a muffin if you want to meet.'
But just when I am struck by the milk of human kindness, another email pings up from Sarah: 'Have you come to a decision?' she asks. 'Only I do have another lady interested, and I want to get this wrapped up before the end of the summer break.'
When I went back to some of the ! girls to tell them that I was a journalist and to ask them to justify their actions, Davina, the actress, was genuinely shocked to learn that selling eggs for profit is illegal in the UK.
'I didn't know. I just thought it was the same as in America, where you hear about students funding their way through college. I wouldn't have broken the law.'
Law student Hannah also claimed she did not know her £10,000 demand was against the rules. 'I thought it was frowned upon, but not illegal.'
After a week of dealing with various potential donors, an alarming reality hit me: not one of those women had shown the slightest interest in what might happen once a baby was born.
There seemed to be no thought for the child with their genes, or any sign of an emotional attachment to any possible child who may be the spitting image of them but whom they will never know.
Sarah had already provided a son for a woman in the Middle East and seemed more than willi! ng to do so again for another one closer to home. The law dict! ates tha t no donor can produce more than ten live births, and most clinics limit donation to three cycles.
With women like Sarah and Hannah, it's not unreasonable to imagine that they could end up with half-a-dozen offspring in all corners of the globe.
And what of the poor children themselves? It is likely that many women simply do not tell their sons or daughters that they were donor conceived; but in cases where the birth mother was simply too old to have had a child naturally, an explanation will have to be offered.
Learning that you were donor conceived by a woman who sold her eggs to the highest bidder is surely not a tale that any child would relish.
