Human eggs for sale on the net

Human eggs are being put up for sale over the internet for the first time today.

Entrepreneurs are cashing in on the shortage of donor eggs by launching an international brokering service.

Women needing eggs for IVF treatment can now use a website offering a bank of potential donors from around the world.

The eggs will sell for thousands of pounds, with huge payments for donors and middlemen collecting hefty "introductory" fees.

The service could see impoverished women overseas making vast sums from selling their eggs to desperate westerners.

Today doctors and reproductive ethics campaigners accused businessmen of profiteering from human misery. They called for tighter legislation to prevent eggs trafficking.

But founders defended the new service, claiming it would help thousands of infertile couples. Waiting lists run at up to three years for British women needing eggs for IVF.

At present, under rules set by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), donors can be paid strictly limited expenses, but cannot be offered any other incentive. This means if a woman does not have a friend or relative to donate an egg her options are limited.

And fertility specialists fear the supply of donor eggs will dwindle even further after a recent UK ruling stripping egg and sperm donors of their anonymity.

But the HFEA has no powers over payments to donors overseas.

The new London-based internet business will circumvent the ban on payments by matching British women with donors living in countries where there are no restrictions on fees.

Britons who sign up to the service will be charged £1,200 plus VAT to be "introduced" to the donor of their choice. But middlemen will make all practical arrangements and financial negotiations. Brokers will identify a private fertility clinic where both women can be treated.

The website, called WomenNot-Included.com is a spin-off of the controversial ManNotIncluded.com site, which sells mail-order sperm to single women and lesbian couples.

John Gonzales, who will launch the business, said: "WomenNotIncluded will increase the global egg pool, clearing a vast backlog of eager, yet deprived women and reducing a waiting time of three-to-five years to mere weeks."

Rajat Goswamy, of the Harley Street Fertility Clinic, said: "If the HFEA allowed payment of donors in Britain, it would stop these sorts of organisations exploiting patients."

A spokeswoman for the HFEA said: "If a clinic is not storing eggs or sperm, it does not need a licence. As this is a website, not a clinic, and is not storing gametes, our powers are limited."

Mr Gonzales's other website, ManNotIncluded, launched almost two years ago, has 9,500 sperm donors, and 5,000 women on its books. The service has already helped two lesbian couples have babies. Jaime Saphier, 26, gave birth to a boy in Liverpool in January. She is bringing him up with her 31-year-old partner, Sarah Watkinson.

Mr Gonzales claims his new website expresses his company's ethos of helping all women have children, irrespective of their age, sexuality, marital status or fertility.

But Josephine Quintavalle, of the pro-life group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: "It is very dubious. It is a process of buying and selling eggs, and such trafficking is not allowed. It is time the HFEA showed some backbone, and put a stop to it."