Since 1991, sperm donors in the UK have had the legal right to withdraw consent for the use of their sperm in fertility treatment. This has the potential to adversely affect patients. It may mean that previous recipients of a donor’s sperm cannot have further children who are full biological siblings to an existing child, and that embryos created from the donor’s sperm and a patient’s eggs must be destroyed. We have informally investigated withdrawal of consent by sperm donors donating after 1 April 2005, when lifelong anonymity for gamete donors ended.
Ask a couple struggling to conceive what they would want most in life and "a child" is the obvious answer. They want something money can't buy, even with all the money in the world. For a couple needing egg or sperm donation this reality might change. Money could buy at least the chance of a child if donors were to be paid, if that's one of the outcomes of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) donation review. Various issues are being reviewed in the HFEA public consultation, but payment of egg and sperm donors is high on the agenda.
Clinicians and egg donors have signalled their support for a rise in the amount of compensation paid to women who donate eggs to infertile women in the United Kingdom, as the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority prepares to launch a public consultation on the subject.
Compensation paid to egg and sperm donors in the United Kingdom could be increased to include a payment for inconvenience, in a bid to tackle an acute shortage of donated gametes. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which regulates infertility treatment, raises the possibility in a review of its policies on egg and sperm donation launched on 17 January. European law bans payment for donated gametes but allows donors to be compensated for expenses, loss of earnings, and inconvenience. Current HFEA rules allow egg donors to be reimbursed for loss of earnings and expenses, such as travel costs, up to a maximum of £250 (€300; $400). But nothing can be claimed for the physical inconvenience that gamete donors experience, even though egg donation is invasive and sperm donation time consuming.