[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.7.4″][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Making Babies, Pushing Boundaries: The Great Greek Fertility Market” image_orientation=”bottom” title_last_edited=”off|phone” content_tablet=”<\/p>\n
In the margins of Greece\u2019s booming IVF industry, women trade their eggs and clinics gamble with ethics while the state looks the other way.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Investigation: Elvira Krithari
Date: 11\/07\/2021
Illustration: Sanja Pantic\/BIRN<\/p>\n
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In the margins of Greece\u2019s booming IVF industry, women trade their eggs and clinics gamble with ethics while the state looks the other way.<\/p>\n
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Investigation: Elvira Krithari<\/p>\n
Date: 11\/07\/2021<\/p>\n
Illustration: Sanja Pantic\/BIRN<\/p>\n
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In the margins of Greece\u2019s booming IVF industry, women trade their eggs and clinics gamble with ethics while the state looks the other way.<\/p>\n
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Investigation: Elvira Krithari<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Date: 11\/7\/2021<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Illustration: Sanja Pantic\/BIRN<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_fullwidth_header][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.7.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”||1px||false|false”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.7.4″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.7.4″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.7.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false”]<\/p>\n The working week was a grind but the weekends back then made it seem worthwhile. On Friday nights, between waitressing or whatever job she had taken to pay the bills, Lina would hit the dancefloor. She was in her early twenties and sucking the marrow out of the nightlife \u2013 or as she says, \u201ceating it up with a spoon\u201d. The Greek economy was on its knees and even waitresses were struggling, but if you worked through the tourist season, the money from tips could help you through the lean months. On the dancefloor, Lina learnt to get by on a single bottle of alcopops, staying out so late that it was practically early and she could take the morning metro home.<\/p>\n She had come to Athens in her teens and found a scene to suit her tastes in scruffy-but-trendy Gazi district. She styled herself as a punk and, with her cropped hair and soft features, could have passed for a beautiful boy playing at being a girl, or vice versa. As a kid, growing up in Bulgaria, she had a thing for toy soldiers. She was less fond of the pink lace dress that she was forced to wear for Christmas and special occasions.<\/p>\n It was always the same bars in Gazi that she went to, and the same crowd too. They all knew each other and they were looking for the same things \u2013 to flirt, have fun, forget. The vibe was intimate, uninhibited. Still, the approach from the barwoman came as a surprise. Ever fancied donating your eggs, she asked Lina \u2013 it\u2019s easy money and I know the right people.<\/p>\n While not quite the sort of overture one expected in a lesbian bar, it was not the first time that Lina had heard of the practice \u2013 girls she knew had done it. Soon enough, she was wondering if she should do it too. It\u2019s either that, said a friend who knew a thing or two about making money on the side, or go work as a call-girl \u2013 take your pick.<\/p>\n Lina first donated her ova at a fertility clinic at the age of 23. Over the next seven years, she would donate a further four times. Each cycle of donation involved ten days of hormone therapy, administered by daily injection to stimulate her ovaries to produce eggs that would be retrieved at the clinic under general anaesthetic. A selection of those ova would be fertilised to make embryos that would be assigned to one of the many thousands of clients from Europe and beyond that seek out Greece\u2019s fertility clinics every year, hoping for a baby. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t feel like giving birth,\u201d Lina told the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN. \u201cYou don\u2019t feel anything, except that your ovaries are about to burst.\u201d<\/p>\n Lina\u2019s friend, Violeta, did not have such an easy ride. She too chose to donate her ova for money, but after the second cycle of hormone therapy, fluid filled her stomach and her lung cavity \u2013 a rare and potentially life-threatening complication linked to the over-stimulation of the ovaries. \u201cI could no longer breathe,\u201d she told BIRN. \u201cI had to sleep standing up. I was coughing like I smoked ten packets a day.\u201d<\/p>\n Lina and Violeta are not their real names \u2013 both women spoke on condition of anonymity. Their motives for donating their ova were explicitly financial, defying the ethos of the Greek fertility sector, where donations are meant to be altruistic. Their appointments were arranged by a scout, or \u201cdealer\u201d, who received a payment from both clinics and donors for bringing them together.<\/p>\n The use of paid scouts also defies the ethos of the Greek fertility sector. Although technically illegal, it is nonetheless widespread: the product of a market where the demand for donated ova far outstrips supply. BIRN interviewed one such scout in her apartment in a working-class neighbourhood of Athens. The meeting proceeded on the assumption that the journalist was a prospective donor. The scout introduced herself as a \u201crepresentative of doctors\u201d.<\/p>\n A husky-voiced woman in her fifties, she had a guarded, streetwise manner that softened as she spoke of the young women whom she had recruited for the fertility sector. \u201cI love my girls,\u201d she said. \u201cAll of them.\u201d Her living room, furnished with a leopard-skin motif, was adorned with portraits of babies. The scout explained that fertility clinics had a tendency to exploit donors by making them donate more than was healthy. But the women who went through her had nothing to fear, she added, because the clinics dared not mess with someone of her standing. \u201cThe doctors fear me because they know I can take away their license. If one of my girls isn\u2019t well, I\u2019ll tear them apart,\u201d she said. \u201cAfter twenty years of working in the night, I can eat them for breakfast.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.7.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||2px||false|false” custom_padding=”||2px||false|false”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.7.4″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/miir.gr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/1_body.jpeg” title_text=”1_body” align=”center” force_fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.7.4″ _module_preset=”default”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text content_tablet=”<\/p>\n The pool of ova donors in Greece includes many young women in financial need, tempted by the offer of money. Illustration: Sanja Pantic\/BIRN<\/p>\n ” content_phone=”<\/p>\n The pool of ova donors in Greece includes many young women in financial need, tempted by the offer of money. Illustration: Sanja Pantic\/BIRN<\/p>\n ” content_last_edited=”on|phone” admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”4.7.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|300|||||||” text_text_color=”#6b6b6b” text_font_size=”14px” custom_margin=”-0.5px||||false|false” custom_padding=”0px||||false|false” global_module=”11707″ saved_tabs=”all” content__hover_enabled=”on|desktop” content__hover=””]<\/p>\n The pool of ova donors in Greece includes many young women in financial need, tempted by the offer of money. Illustration: Sanja Pantic\/BIRN<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.7.4″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.7.4″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.7.4″ _module_preset=”default”]<\/p>\n In the 42 years since the birth of the first IVF baby in Britain, advances in the science of assisted reproduction have made parenthood a reality for millions who might otherwise have missed out. A global market has emerged for fertility treatments and Greece has become a major player within it, thanks to its world-class doctors, cutting-edge clinics, competitive prices and a liberal legal framework.<\/span><\/p>\n Websites promoting the country\u2019s clinics, illustrated with tourist-brochure images of the Mediterranean coast, offer the chance to combine IVF with a holiday. For more than a decade, Greece has closely followed Spain in the rankings of Europe\u2019s top destinations for assisted reproduction procedures.<\/span><\/p>\n Throughout that period however, Greek fertility clinics have been operating without meaningful oversight. The state-backed agency tasked with regulating them has been chronically under-resourced since its creation in 2005, and for six years \u2013 between 2008-14 \u2013 it was effectively out of action. Last October, it was abruptly dissolved, and its successor agency was only launched in spring this year.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe clinics are well versed in anarchy,\u201d said Katerina Fountedaki, the deputy president of the disbanded regulator, the National Authority for Assisted Reproduction, from 2018-20. The regulator\u2019s first board resigned in 2008, complaining that the state did not support them. For the ensuing six years, Fountedaki said, \u201cthe landscape of assisted reproduction was in chaos, without any controls.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n This investigation reveals how Greek fertility clinics became a law unto themselves, operating unsupervised at the frontiers of assisted reproduction. Drawing on accounts of ova donors, clinic employees and experts, it offers a glimpse of what an unregulated market in human fertility could look like: a place where ethics are trampled under the pursuit of profit, and exploitation thrives under the guise of altruism.<\/span><\/p>\n The market for donated ova, driven by huge demand, inhabits the margins of the fertility industry. To meet the demand, the market offers women on low incomes a financial incentive to engage in what is meant to be an altruistic process. It also incentivises some clinics to treat the women donating their ova in a manner that is often unethical, bordering on exploitative. Many have used ova from the same donors more often that is healthy or ethical. Some clinics have, on occasion, failed to secure informed consent from donors for invasive procedures that are not entirely risk-free. Others have performed procedures off-the-books \u2013 without keeping records \u2013 and others still have sourced genetic material from organised crime gangs involved in human trafficking.<\/span><\/p>\n BIRN has uncovered evidence of these breaches at individual clinics, but it is hard to gauge precisely how widespread they are across the sector. While some Greek clinics are guided by laws and ethics, others evidently are not. Exactly how many is unknown because the sector has been operating in a regulatory vacuum, with no mechanism for collecting essential data. A centralised register of donors \u2013 the bare minimum for monitoring ethical compliance \u2013 was only created in 2019, despite having been a legal requirement since 2005.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe clinics may be at fault where they violate existing provisions,\u201d said Vassilis Tarlatzis, a pioneer of IVF in Greece who served as the first vice president of the regulator, from 2006-8. However, he said, it was the state that was ultimately to blame: successive governments had failed to create a regulator and a central register that were fit for purpose. \u201cThese things show the amateurism of the state,\u201d he told BIRN. \u201cBecause if you really take the issues around assisted reproduction seriously, you have to invest in them and get them right.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n BIRN contacted the press office at the Greek Ministry of Health by e-mail and phone four times over a three-week period before the publication of this story, asking it to comment on the regulation of the fertility sector. The press office said it could not find anyone to respond to the questions. BIRN also contacted the new regulatory body three times by e-mail and phone during the same period, asking for comment. An official said there was no one available to respond to the questions.<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.7.4″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.7.4″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_code _builder_version=”4.7.4″ _module_preset=”default”]