Regarding: Melinda Gates’ support of Proposition 71, California’s stem cell initiative

Dear Ms. Gates,

HandsOffOurOvaries is a project of Every Woman First, Inc., a non-profit dedicated to women’s health issues as they relate to biotechnology. We are not asking for money! Rather, we are asking you not to give. Please let us explain.

You and Mr. Gates were generous funders of Proposition 71, California’s 2004 stem cell initiative. Poorly understood is the fact that acquiring the eggs necessary for the cloning portion of this research stands to harm women in ways that its promoters erroneously dismiss as inconsequential. Because women have been undergoing egg extraction as part of in vitro fertilization (IVF) for two decades a common presumption is that the procedure is safe. But this misapprehension prevails only because IVF remains largely unregulated: tracking and reporting on the health of the women who undergo egg extraction is not required. However, grassroots women’s groups e.g. Our Bodies, Ourselves, have been monitoring the field and are gravely concerned both by what they have found and by established medicine’s evident disregard of women’s complaints and experiences. Sadly, this inattention is part of a pattern of disregard in women’s health care. The ill effects of thalidomide, DES, and hormone replacement therapy are only several of the more prominent examples of interventions that caused iatrogenic illness owing to their incautious and widespread application in advance of systematic study.

Before surgically extracting their eggs, women are given powerful drugs. Lupron, commonly used to shut down a woman’s ovaries before stimulating them to produce many times more the normal number of eggs has not been approved for this purpose. Twenty-five deaths and thousands of complaints regarding this drug have yet to be investigated by the FDA. Antagon, a drug that has been approved for such use has no long term safety data. Studies on stimulatory drugs provide serious warnings. According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine mild Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (OHSS), e.g. ovarian enlargement, nausea, vomiting and abdominal discomfort occurs in 10-20% of cycles. Severe OHSS includes a wide range of serious consequences including loss of fertility, kidney or multiple organ failure, and death. Estimates of the frequency of severe OHSS vary widely, but are as high as 10 per cent of women who undergo the procedure. Younger women are more vulnerable to severe OHSS. Five women are known to have died of OHSS in the UK where reporting is required. Moreover, there are no studies adequate to asses more long-term but very serious risks, e.g. ovarian cancer.

Untold thousands of eggs will be necessary to conduct research cloning, and science-entrepreneurs who have major conflicts of interest should not be empowered to recruit “donors.” A case in point is the 2004 cloning effort (now thoroughly discredited) in which South Korean and U. S. researchers used more than 2,000 eggs obtained by paying and coercing women, some of whom were in subordinate positions within the research lab. Now, thirty-five Korean women’s groups are seeking compensation on behalf of the nearly 20 percent of the “donors” harmed by the procedures. Science-entrepreneurs also revealed a disregard for women’s health during California’s 2004 campaign for its stem cell initiative. There they sued (unsuccessfully) in an attempt to prevent feminists from publishing in the Voters Guide information revealing that Proposition 71 would incur serious risks to women’s health.

The trade in human ova already crosses national borders, and there are numerous examples demonstrating that this growing international trade is brutally exploiting young women living in Eastern Europe and other countries. For example, poor, semi-literate young Romanian factory workers are reported to repeatedly sell their ova for $250 in efforts to escape the depredations of poverty and the absence of employment opportunities that pay a living wage. Finding themselves suffering from new and mysterious health problems, some of them have taken legal action complaining of inadequate informed consent, poor medical follow-up, and other violations of established medical standards

The politics of abortion has hijacked clear thinking on the issue of embryo stem cell research. In order to liberate full disclosure of the issues from the log-jam of abortion discourse, proChoice and proLife feminists created HandsOffOurOvaries, a safe-zone in which we can together draw attention to the callous disregard of women’s lives demonstrated by the push for egg procurement. The science, social science, and health care professionals who joined to form HandsOffOurOvaries cordially invite you to contact us at, everywoman@handsoffourovaries.com to discuss our global call for a moratorium on egg procurement and our request that the Gates Foundation refuse to donate to research that trades women’s health in a highly speculative gamble for cures.

We look forward to the possibility of hearing from you and hope, too, that you will visit www.handsoffourovaries.com for more information