Just last October 2012, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) declared egg freezing for cancer patients to be non-experimental. Given the huge, recent advances in egg freezing technology, the experts felt that the benefits of freezing eggs to preserve fertility in cancer patients were clear. Cancer patients often must undergo surgery, chemotherapy and radiation that can significantly affect their future fertility. Certain types of chemotherapy and radiation can literally destroy your eggs. If you freeze them before you undergo treatment, then your chances of conceiving later with your own eggs is increased.
They stopped short of endorsing freezing eggs for single women who have not found Mr. Right.
While a lot of discussion has revolved around fertility preservation, the fact that frozen eggs will completely change the process of egg donation has received a lot less attention.
At some point in the near future, more and more centers will figure out how to freeze eggs well and frozen egg banks will become the norm. Eventually we will handle eggs the same way we handle sperm: People that need egg donation will simply order their eggs online and have them shipped to their center of choice, or large centers will have their own egg banks.
This will take much of the uncertainty out of egg donation – How will the donor respond to medication? What if she responds more quickly or more slowly than expected? What if she responds so slowly the entire cycle is in jeopardy because she forgot to tell you she has to fly to Texas to be a bridesmaid in her best friends wedding? What if she doesn’t make any eggs? What if the eggs are really awful? What if she makes so many eggs the recipient would have to clone herself 10 times in order to use all the embryos? What if the recipient’s lining is poor? What if the recipients husband forgot to tell you about the nuclear medicine scan he just had that makes him and his sperm radioactive?
