Sex cells.

[dragonlady7]

Oh, I am hyper. I think it is because i cleaned the coffee machine and the caffeine is under my fingernails and is just now getting into my blood stream or something.

My friend Kat (kkatowll) is considering donating her ova to the local IVF clinic to help her get out of debt.
At first I was like, "You crazy!"
But then I was like, "Wait, they pay you $3500 for that?"

Here is more of that train of thought. Yes, I am crazy.

Dude, would you prostitute yourself to estrogen and let your pre-zygotes (I forget what they're called) get harvested to pay off your credit card bill?

Me, I am genetically so squeaky-clean and eugenic it is just obscene. They should pay more for my sex cells. I come of good stock, man. OK, so the eyes tend toward weakness, as do the lungs, and I personally have something wonky going on with my molars (in that two of them never actually existed), but dude, I've got excellent bone structure and my baby photos look like the goddamn Hitler Youth posters. Cmon, you want shiny blonde busty tall babies with pasty, er, alabaster skin! And hell, I've got pedigree charts going back to Charlemagne. I should be able to name my own price.

And the price at which I would do most anything is.... Meh, a little higher than $3500, but less higher than you'd think. ("I could afford a laptop," she sighs, all starry-eyed...)

Comments

[eggplantia5.livejournal.com]

the only problem with having your ova harvested (besides any moral or spiritual issues you may have) is that they pump you full of hormones and chemicals. i've heard awful things about these hormones messing you up for a long time, and potentially causing various cancers at early ages. i don't know that $3,500 is worth months of having my body go through all that torment and then the uncertainties of it ever going back to normal.

but anyway, i've seen in advertisements in movie theaters in the city, places offering upwards of $8,000 for eggs. so, if i ever was desperate enough for money, i'd shop around, in a manner of speaking.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

>shop around

Oh for sure, man.
Humorous as it sounds.

I'm not so desperate just yet, but it's better than selling a kidney.

[eggplantia5.livejournal.com]

well sure, cos selling a kidney is a little bit illegal.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

There's that too, yes...

[ellbee804.livejournal.com]

Maybe you could auction your eggs on Ebay.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Now there's a thought.

You can bet I'm posting all my cute baby photos up there. "Don't you want one??"

[tehta.livejournal.com]

I know a girl who got paid $15,000 for hers, for being tall and blonde and having gone to Harvard. But she said the hormones were *murder*--she gained lots of weight and cried/yelled so much she broke up with her boyfriend.

[kkatowll.livejournal.com]

Well, if I go through with it, I'll let you know. But I've heard the same tales about birth control, and everybody I know has no problems with it.

According to the national egg-donor stuff I've got, they always match donors up to be as close to their parents as possible, in terms of hair color, eye color, etc. The national registry says it's got too many Aryan types, and not enough blacks and hispanics. Says there's often a 5-year waiting list for them. So, I'm guessing that's where the real money is. Alas, all I can offer in brown hair and brown eyes.

[tehta.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's better now--this was almost ten years ago ('96), and now that you mention it a couple of my college friends used to have problems with the pill back then, but now they are both on minipills and happy. Or maybe she just used it as an excuse to eat lots of candy and scream at her boyfriend.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

>too many Aryan types

Ha! That's funny. I only assumed there was demand because at my college there was this poster up for ever of people looking for an Aryan-type donor. But now that you mention it, of course it's not just Aryan-types who want to have babies that look like themselves.
So it was arrogant of me to assume.
And i bet there's a surfeit of Aryan-types like me who assume our genotype is in demand! That's really funny to consider. Of course not everybody wants tall blond babies.

Dammit, why do I have to be male?

[(Anonymous)]

I don't suppose they pay quite so much for sperm, do they?

--qwerty

Re: Dammit, why do I have to be male?

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Dave was laughing about that-- they used to advertise around his college campus for sperm donors, but the amount they paid was hardly worth the gas to make the trip.

Well? They don't have to pump you full of hormones or harvest your sex cells with a reeeeeally long needle under general anaesthesia, so it's a lot easier to find people willing to do it.
I may talk big, but I'm totally skeeved about that reeeeeally long needle.