Egg donation in Malaysia – pitfalls IVF patients should avoid

Photo: DRKONTOGIANNIIVF/Wikimedia Commons

I READ with great interest the article entitled “Ethics of eggs-tra income” (The Star, June 16), which described ethical problems in the rampant commercialisation of egg donation in Malaysia. Indeed, many foreign patients often travel to Malaysia for IVF (in vitro fertilisation) egg donation treatment due to the ready availability of paid egg donors. However, due to lax regulation of egg donation, patients often have to navigate a complex web of marketing gimmicks, misleading information and ethical pitfalls. Hence, it is imperative to emphasise what they should pay attention to and be wary of.

First and foremost, patients should be particularly careful not to be duped into performing unnecessary genetic testing of IVF embryos, a technique known as preimplantation genetic screening (PGS) or preimplantation genetic testing- aneuploidy (PGT-A). This procedure is very expensive and often increases medical fees by up to 50%.