An industry that welcomes regulation

Recruitment of sperm donors has never been an issue in the UK. Of course with the increased demand of sperm donation and the increase in patient choice, now we have widened our net of sperm donors so that we can get sperm donors from Europe, any European country, you know, where you have the facility to recruit sperm donors or from the U.S. Recruitment of egg donors has been a little bit more complex than that because giving sperm is one thing but giving eggs is a different kettle of fish. Up until recently it was illegal to pay a donor for donation. And I think that is absolutely right.

However, there has to be a token of appreciation at least to cover travelling expenses and things that will make the kind of health provider feel appreciative of the act. And since the HFEA has put down some rules that governs the re-compensation of donors that is reasonable and that is transparent, this has kind of facilitated the recruitment of egg donors, because we used to kind of send the vast majority of our egg recipients abroad. And the patients were very unhappy about that. They went to countries where they don’t speak the language and they don’t know the doctors.

And it was an absolute nightmare, now most of the clinics treat their patients in-house as it where and again; this is another policy that the HFEA has done to good effect.