As any devotee of internet shopping knows, there are few things these days that cannot be bought off the shelf. Snap-on teeth, brand-new breasts, even human kidneys can be yours “to go” if you have the cash and the determination to find them.
But until now, embryos were not one of those things. Yes, you could buy yourself an egg and some sperm in separate transactions or find an IVF patient who would donate leftover embryos to you. But buying a ready-made embryo as you might purchase a Marks & Spencer suit — surely that would be taking consumer culture too far?
Apparently not. A company in Texas that calls itself “the world’s first human embryo bank” is offering couples and single women the chance to order from its batches of existing embryos after browsing detailed information sheets about the race, education, personalities, hair and eye colour of the egg and sperm donors.
The Abraham Center of Life is the first commercial enterprise making embryos in advance for unspecified recipients who pay $2,500 (£1,290) for each embryo. The total price tag for each attempt at pregnancy, including the implantation procedure, is estimated at between $8,000 and $10,000. It has provoked a predictable outcry over the creation of “designer babies” and accusations that human reproduction is being turned into a factory production line, treating babies as groceries on offer.
If you are in the business of buying babies though, it certainly seems to be a bargain. Jennalee Ryan, a mother of six, runs the company from her home in San Antonio. She says the total cost of embryo donation without involving a surrogate mother is “approximately half the cost of adoption and much less expensive than the total IVF procedure, with a greater overall success rate”, (she rates IVF at 30 per cent successful, and claims her method is nearer 70 per cent). The cost for IVF in America can range from $12,000 to $20,000. Adoption, depending on the circumstances, can run into tens of thousands of dollars but, thanks to falling birth rates, contraception and availability of abortion, babies are scarce.
Of course Ryan’s service is so far unproven. She says that the first two women to use it are five months pregnant, though we have only her word for that. Having endured a failed IVF attempt herself three years ago and witnessed many surrogate pregnancies go wrong, she claims that she is motivated more by a desire to help others than by money, and insists that those who criticise her do not properly understand what she is doing.
“If you are a pro-life person, you should be happy because I’m creating a life. If you are pro-choice, you should be happy because I’m creating choice,” she says at her home as she is bombarded for requests for interview by media outlets around the world. What about those who are uncomfortable about the notion of being able to buy instant, designer, babies off the shelf? “All babies are designer babies,” says Ryan. “We mate with people we find attractive.”
And why not, actually, you might say. People have been choosing the physical characteristics of donors for years. Arranged marriages go back centuries and constitute a form of gene selection. Is there much difference, ethically, between obtaining the sperm and egg separately and putting them together for your purposes and someone else doing it for you first? Surely it is only a logical next step in accommodating infertile people who long for a baby in the modern world?
Legally, there is nothing to stop an infertile British woman going to America and availing herself of the services of the Abraham Center of Life. If she is implanted with an embryo that she buys in the US and gives birth in Britain, then in the eyes of the law she is that baby’s natural mother (for women who cannot carry a baby, by the way, Ryan can also arrange a surrogate-mother service at extra cost). But the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority warns that a British woman seeking such treatment in America would not have the benefits and guarantees afforded by law in the UK because the fertility business is not regulated as strictly. “You must ask yourself, what will the clinic do with your records. Will it be confidential for ever? What if the clinic closes?” says a spokesman. “As the UK is unique in its standards of fertility treatments, we advise that patients who are considering going abroad check the standards and regulation of clinics in that country.”
There is confusion surrounding the service that Ryan offers, and she is eager to clear up misconceptions. The first is that people can submit a checklist of requirements — such as blue eyes, a rosebud mouth, a fondness for classical music — and she will look for matching donors to “create” a baby to suit them in a manner that evokes the word “eugenics”.
It doesn’t work like that, she says. Ryan already has donors in place to create embryos — typically 20 to 30 from a particular cycle — and she will show applicants the backgrounds of those donors so they can decide whether to accept or reject. “I don’t take orders,” she says. “I say, ‘This is what I have’ and send them the background. If they don’t think it’s right for them, they don’t have to take it.” However, she does use only sperm donors in their twenties and thirties who have at least some tertiary education — some may hold a doctorate or law degree. But, as she says: “Most people who donate at sperm banks have to be college-educated, so why doesn’t anyone shout at sperm banks?” Another misconception is that Ryan runs a clinic. What she actually does is broker between donor embryos and recipients. She hires the services of doctors to perform the medical procedures; the embryos are stored at their various clinics and not, she says laughing, in a refrigerator in her kitchen. One doctor in Houston whom she hired to create her second batch of embryos (the service has been running for only a few months) pulled out after learning what she was doing. She is keen to tell me that she does not have “thousands of embryos sitting on ice”.
Because the service is new it is relatively small: “We are still in the embryonic stages, if you don’t mind the pun.” She has a long waiting list of recipients and, in reality, each batch of embryos is “spoken for” immediately. If the service grows bigger, however, this might not be the case and the idea of “shopping” for a baby may become a fair accusation.
Ryan’s own background is complex. She says she has five children who are biologically hers, and which she raised largely as a single parent, and one adopted son. Ryan recently moved to Texas from California, where she ran an adoption business, Abagail’s Silver Spoon Adoptions, which she says is one of the largest in the nation and provides the bulk of her income. But Ryan’s local newspaper reports that two top San Antonio adoption agencies do not know her. “I’ve been around for 30 years doing adoptions and I’ve never heard of her,” Jan Couve, the executive director of Adoption Affiliates, told the San Antonio Express-News.
