Ahuja, Kamal

The introduction of egg sharing in the UK in 1992 was greeted with deep suspicion. Despite its practical appeal to patients, the concept was portrayed as exploitative and unethical and it deeply polarised the opinions of key stakeholders and also the media. The regulator, Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) came under tremendous pressure to ban the practice and seemingly came very close to doing just that. However, to their credit they resorted to a careful examination of the arguments through public debates and a consultation exercise before, in 1998, accepting egg sharing as a licensed treatment. In 2007, some ten years after the original decision, the HFEA reaffirmed their support of the original decision by approving egg sharing as a suitable practice to obtain human eggs for stem cell research.
It is probably fair to say that apart from IVF itself no assisted conception procedure has undergone such an in-depth scrutiny as egg sharing before becoming accepted. The key objectives of this presentation are: 1.To examine how the HFEA argued the merits of egg sharing against what was initially perceived as its shortcomings, 2. The promise egg sharing may hold for clinical research and treatment in future, and, 3. The vigilance and research required to ensure that the practice does not deviate from its objective of providing a safe and affordable form of IVF treatment for those who have few other options.