A Copenhagen-based sperm bank is offering women the chance of a holiday in the sun if they donate their eggs.
Cryos, the world’s largest sperm bank, claims that the country’s regulations on egg donation are both “discriminatory” and “absurd”, but it has come up with a way of getting round the law. The organisation has established a subsidiary abroad that enables it to bypass laws that prohibit the selling of donor eggs.
Women in Denmark are allowed to donate their eggs anonymously or to a person of their choice should they want to help them become pregnant; they can receive up to 2,400 kronor in compensation for treatments too but, unlike when males donate sperm, they are not paid for their eggs.
Danish women only received a maximum of 500 kroner for their eggs until recently, while in neighbouring Sweden, for example, women can get up to 9,000 kroner.
However, Cryos’s latest idea is to offer Danish women a fully-paid wellness holiday to destinations such as Spain, Cyprus and Greece, where they can donate their eggs at local clinics, and potentially earn as much as 11,000 kroner.
Cryos chief Ole Schou explained that in addition to offering the women full compensation for their eggs, the organisation would provide the chance for them to store their eggs in clinics abroad should they want to use them in the future. He insisted that there was nothing “unethical” about it, and that Denmark’s laws were just absurd and discriminatory.
He revealed that they had been lobbying for the laws to be changed for years but, as they had to date been unsuccessful, their only option was to launch a foreign subsidiary. He said that they wanted to help those who cannot give birth but, as a private company, needed to make money by selling eggs, adding that if that was not possible at home, they would do it abroad.