In Competitive Marketplace, Asian Egg Donors in Demand

Regina Joyner hoped for a sibling for Kayla. (By Katherine Frey -- The Washington Post)

For more than 18 fruitless months, Regina and Dennis Joyner searched for an Asian woman willing to donate her eggs. They were on the waiting list at two Washington area fertility clinics. They placed an online classified ad, but the most promising response came from Africa. Finally, they gave up.

"I knew it would be hard, but I did not think it would be that hard," said Regina Joyner, 40, who is Chinese American. "I wish I would have just adopted. . . . I would have had a baby by now."

Egg donation, often the last resort for women who cannot conceive, offers a sort of miracle: the ability to choose a donor who has not just a good résumé but also physical traits similar to the prospective mother's. For many minority or immigrant recipients, it is a treasured chance to pass on an ethnic bloodline and physical characteristics, perhaps helping the child fit in seamlessly. A Korean couple, for example, can request a Korean donor, and doctors say they usually do.

But as egg donation has surged over the past two decades, clinics and donor recruiting agencies say the supply of ethnic minority donors, especially Asians, has not kept pace with demand. For reasons probably involving complex cultural attitudes about fertility and basic marketing principles, Asian eggs are hard to find.

"Oftentimes, it's not good enough for the Asian groups to even have somebody of half-Asian, half-Caucasian descent," said Frank Chang, a reproductive endocrinologist at Shady Grove Fertility center. "Generally, we're lucky if we can find even one potential donor for that person."

For recipients, that can mean lengthy waits, intensive searches or additional expense; donor agencies usually charge finders' fees of several thousand dollars. The demand has spawned a small niche industry of agencies that scour the nation -- and sometimes the globe -- for ethnic donors.

Critics of egg donation cite recruiting and donor payments as evidence of a fertility industry that has become brazenly commercial. But doctors and donors insist that donors are justly compensated for their time and the discomfort of the donation process, which is far more invasive than sperm donation.

Donors are usually in their fertile 20s. After passing medical and psychological tests, they inject themselves with hormone stimulants for about one month. They are then anesthetized while a physician removes the eggs with a needle. Most clinics in the Washington region pay donors about $6,000.

The Web site of the Washington Fertility Center asks for "urgently needed" Chinese, Ethiopian, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Middle Eastern, Filipino and Vietnamese donors. Recently, its online donor database featured 152 donor profiles. Among the donors were two of Middle Eastern descent and 10 Asians, of whom one was part Indian -- one of the rarest donor ethnicities, doctors say.

Recipients at Shady Grove Fertility, about 15 percent of whom are Asian, can page through a book filled with donor profiles but will find that fewer than 5 percent are Asian, Chang said. Recipients seeking hard-to-find ethnicities might wait two years, he said.

Some clinics say they can usually meet recipients' needs, if they are willing to be flexible.

"All they want is a baby to love, and if it looks like [them], great," said Diana Broomfield, a fertility specialist at Washington Fertility Center.