Egg and sperm donation

For female patients who have no viable eggs at all, or male patients who have no sperm, the option of egg or sperm donation offers a chance to still have a child of their own.

Egg donation

Because of the intense hormone treatment required to collect eggs, egg donation is a serious step for anyone to consider. Sometimes donors come from the community - women who have a family of their own and wish to share that joy with another. More often, the donor is known to the recipient - a friend, sister, or cousin. In either case, Hollywood Fertility Centre requires that the donor and recipient couple undergo a process of implications counselling before the procedure begins.

The process begins by synchronising the menstrual cycles of the donor and recipient. The donor then undergoes a cycle of ovarian stimulation with the aim of producing as many eggs as possible. As the donor reaches the point of ovulation, the recipient begins taking estrogen and progesterone to prepare the lining of her uterus (similar to a frozen cycle).

The eggs are collected and fertilised with sperm from the recipients partner. Resulting embryos are observed and the best chosen for transfer. Any other viable embryos are frozen for later attempts.

Sperm donation

Due to current laws, anonymous donors can only donate to 5 families. As a result there is long waiting list for anonymous sperm recipiants.

All donors are required to put their details on the donor registry. For more information see the Reproductive Technology Council www.rtc.org.au

At Hollywood Fertility Centre we encourage donors to be known to recipiants; whether you've known them all your life or recruited them through a newspaper advertisement.

Single women and lesbian couples

Hollywood Fertility Centre does not refuse treatment to women because of marital status or sexual orientation. Single women and lesbian couples are welcome and treated with care and respect.

We recommend that single women and lesbian couples who come to us for treatment bring with them their own sperm donor. The anonymous spem donor list is long and bringing their own sperm donor would enable treatment to begin earlier.

Quarantine

Eggs and sperm, like most human tissues, can carry diseases. Donors should be tested for disease at the time of donation. A negative test is not conclusive, as some diseases take many months to show up on blood tests. Therefore, sperm and anonymous fertilised eggs should be held in cryo-storage for six months. At the end of that time, the donor should be retested. If that test proves negative, the gametes are considered disease-free.

Some recipients choose to waive the quarantine period for eggs. In this case, Hollywood Fertility Centre takes no responsibility for any diseases contracted by the recipient from the transferred eggs.

By law, however, we must quarantine all anonomyous and known donated sperm for six months before using it to fertilise eggs.

Legal considerations

Firstly, it should be noted that it is illegal in Australia to sell sperm or eggs (or any human tissue). Couples desperate for a child have been known to fall victim to unscrupulous people offering to sell eggs. While it is considered normal for recipients to cover their donor's expenses, if anyone you approach asks for payment beyond expenses, they should be avoided.

The second important point is about parentage. The law considers a woman who gives birth to a child to be the mother of that child. It further considers the partner of that woman to be the father of the child. Donors can be assured that they will be under no legal or financial obligation to the child, though Hollywood Fertility Centre encourages recipients to include the donor in the child's life. Since 2005, the law allows offspring of donor parents to contact the donor when the child turns 16. All donors would have to consent to this before donation.