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Good SAT Scores Lead To Higher Egg Donor Prices
alphadogg writes "Analysis from Georgia Institute of Technology of college newspaper egg donor ads showed that higher payments offered to egg donors correlated with higher SAT scores. 'Holding all else equal, an increase of 100 SAT points in the score of a typical incoming student increased the compensation offered to oocyte donors at that college or university by $2,350,' writes researcher Aaron D. Levine in a paper published in the March-April issue of the Hastings Center Report. Concerned about eggs being treated as commodities, and worried that big financial rewards could entice women to ignore the risks of the rigorous procedures required for harvesting, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine discourages compensation based on donors' personal characteristics. The society also discourages any payments over $10,000."
I thought this was the case with sperm donors for over 20 years. I'm surprised it took so long to apply it to the ova ... I mean other side of the transaction.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Do they offer men bonuses for high SAT scores?
I don't think society has any legitimate interest at stake here that is not covered by allowing the free market to set prices for human eggs. It should be interesting to see what egg buyers will place real $ value on.
This is a surprise? Just take a look around any big name campus - there will usually be some kind of ads posted looking for egg donors. I'm a student at Columbia University and I've seen posters offering $18,000 for eggs from any Columbia student for years.
I called them and asked about what their going rate was for a high-SAT scorer like me, and they offered me $12,000!
Things went badly when I asked if the eggs had to be organic, and what size they should be, and was styrofoam OK or did they prefer paper cartons. Oh, and when they found out I was a guy.
Sexist bastards.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
The Harvard Crimson was one of three college newspapers that ran an identical classified ad seeking a woman who fit a narrow profile: younger than 29 with a GPA over 3.5 and an SAT score over 1,400.
Wouldn't one think that someone going to Harvard with a high GPA and SAT score be smart enough to weigh the risks? Furthermore, these aren't desperate people from a starving nation; they are kids going to some of the most prestigious schools in the country.
This should lead to geeks lessening jocks' reproductive advantages.
Egg donation: yet another way that a high SAT score help you get through college.
Each woman has two ovaries with 300,000 eggs each. At $35,000 per egg, that's $21-billion per woman. You'd think more women would cash in on this.
I think that the worries expressed betray a double standard. How does it make sense to worry about high-SAT women "ignoring the health dangers" of forced ovulation, when you don't worry about low-SAT women ignoring the same dangers and getting a tenth of the money for the ordeal? To be clear: these people don't want women to stop donating eggs. They don't want high-SAT women donating eggs for a lot of money. But the risk in each donation is the same!
In any case, an egg donor will suddenly get a quick and large pile of money. I think the real question should be: How will the money be spent? If the donor gets $50,000 and uses it to help pay for three semesters of her Princeton tuition, I don't see a problem. If another donor, who is not in college, spends $5,000 on shoes and handbags, I don't see a great deal of good having been done.
I know someone who has donated an egg, and she was actually pretty sick for a part of the procedure. Smart women in Princeton, who have other options, will not want to undergo something like this unless you offer them more money. That just seems like a fact. But if the people who want the eggs have the money, and their satisfaction is increased by the knowledge that their donor is academically talented, and the donor herself will use the money to develop her talents further, it's a clear case of "everyone wins."
So why does the American Society for Reproductive Medicine need to shit on this optimal outcome? I think they should be encouraging it!
Back in college our daily newspaper had standing offers in the $15-50k range for eggs of a woman above a certain height, below a certain weight, and above a certain SAT score.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
DO NOT donate sperm, it can bite you in the ass later. There have been court cases where the mother who was artificially inseminated with donated sperm was later able to track down the man who donated the sperm, and successfully sue him for child support.
This is just another example of where the family court system is biased against men. Women automatically get custody of children, or more custody than the man, unless they are on crack or something and this can be proven. Alimony is a total insult; it's the notion that a woman has a legal right to get used to a particular lifestyle that her husband provided, and therefore her former husband has to pay her money after the divorce to make sure she doesn't have to get used to what her income alone can provide. If that was really fair, the woman would have to continue having sex with the man after the divorce, since that was the lifestyle he was used to when married, but fairness is not the goal here. Imagine a couple suing the female egg donor for child support after using her egg to produce a baby. It would be laughed out of court. But women have successfully sued men for child support for donating sperm.
Warning to men - it might look like easy money for something you do anyway (masturbating) but seriously, it's a bad idea.
It seems ironic that women of higher learning who might, as some suggest, fund their education from their ovaries, would need to go to a fertility clinic after their successful education and careers that kept them way from the maternity ward until their 30s or 40s.
a wedgie and that's not a bonus.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Maybe you missed the part about holding everything else equal.
"all else equal, an increase of 100 SAT points in the score of a typical incoming student increased the compensation offered to oocyte donors at that college or university by $2,350"
So I would presume they would compare across the same schools and adjust accordingly.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Smart enough? Possibly, but remember that this guy went to both Yale (BA) and Harvard (MBA). Don't know about his GPA or SAT scores though... or whether that says more/less about him or the schools.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
SATs over 750 each
Certified Mensa IQ
Concert pianist
Well endowed
High metablosim - hint, hint
Blonde, blue eyes
Starting bid: $youcantaffordit
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
You pay for quality, and this is just an example of that. You wouldn't pay $15 for a McD's burger, at least most people wouldn't, but a Red Robin (or similar high end) one could command that sort of price.
I know some people might think that's horrible, but the cold-hard truth is that some people are higher quality than others. We might be equal before the law, and have equal rights, but when people are given a choice in potential breeding partners, they will opt for as high as they can afford. In the social realm, that means relying on their own value as judged by whatever criteria (looks, smarts, social success as measured by wealth, social success as measured by "charm", etc) to get as good a "product" as possible. The pricing in this article just reflects the ability to turn one set of attributes into cash, and people's willingness to pay for certain attributes.
So we know that certain people have higher risks of developing certain diseases based on genetic factors, such as gender (color-blindness in men) or 'race' (Tay-Sachs in Ashkenazi jews). People are even willing to pay more for eggs or sperm from people with high SAT scores or PhD's. Yet, when a Harvard University President suggests that maybe certain aspects of intelligence are based on genetics, it causes an uproar.
I'm not suggesting that a certain race or sex is inferior to another, but why is the mere suggestion that intelligence is based on genetics (and therefore gives inherent benefits to certain genetic groups) considered so taboo? Can't we at least consider, discuss, and perform rigorous research on the subject?
I might be trolled for this, but he wasn't always a bumbling idiot. Not that I've voted for him or condone his choices but as a younger man, he wasn't what you would call stupid.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
This is the funny thing. In the "How do I get an entry level programming job" the university you go to seems to make a difference. But when we look at individual cases, we can see clear exceptions where the school does nothing to help the individual. It is only in aggregate that the school's name is valuable. This is partly due to applicant self-selection, and partly do to the entrance process selecting people based on prior performance.
I had the option to go to a school with a minimum requirement of 12 on the ACT, increased to 14 "to stress the importance of academics" or something, coincidentally the same year that they added 2 points to ACT scores pretty much across the board, so my 34 was equivalent to my older brother's 32.
People who don't meet the minimum requirements for Ivy League don't get in... unless your life is exceptional, meaning made up of exceptions.
http://www.monkeydyne.com/bushresume/early.html
So did they bend the rules to let him in? Did the top-notch universities help him? Did he tarnish the name of those institutions? There is no obvious answer, but it is obvious that universities only hold prestige in aggregate, not in individual cases. And anyone who makes decisions based on the institution attended is a fool.
If you can get in, networking and cronyism are the benefits of Ivy League education, not the value of the education. Secondary is hanging out with people who are as smart as you are, which is easier when you attend a university which suits you.
Yeah, paying that much for a donor egg would render your intellect questionable
Raising a child is an expensive proposition. It's somewhere in the $200k range, just for the food, shelter, clothing, education, and medical care for 18 years. Then you toss on all the prenatal, neonatal, and postpartum medical bills, along with college, and it all adds up to a huge pile of money. Further, that assumes nothing goes wrong (no teen pregnancy or delinquency, no serious medical problems). At that point, spending an extra 1% for better genes doesn't seem as extravagant, and is probably a good investment.
All the financial issues aside, parents generally want what's best for their kids, and will go to great lengths for them. If getting an egg donor with good genes offers their kid a promising future, it's something prospective parents will prioritize almost irrationally.
I don't know about that. This link, The Resume of George W. Bush (the early years), from another follow-up post, would seem to indicate otherwise. I can't authenticate its accuracy, but have seen some of the items listed in other articles.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Smart enough? Possibly, but remember that this guy went to both Yale (BA) and Harvard (MBA). Don't know about his GPA or SAT scores though... or whether that says more/less about him or the schools.
It takes some brains to convince everyone that you're stupid, to make them underestimate you, so that behind the scenes you can do whatever you like with little or no scrutiny. It takes brains and a ruthless determination to get your way no matter what it takes, even at the expense of widespread ridicule. It also takes some brains to exploit a climate of fear and use time-tested tactics (such as calling your opponents "unpatriotic") to virtually guarantee that the Congress will pass whatever legistlation you recommend with little or no concern for the Constitution.
It takes brains to do all of this. It also takes a profound lack of wisdom to have the desire to do this. An amount of inhumanity helps, too, for disregarding all the damage (sorry, "collateral damage") such policies have caused. No, G.W. Bush was not stupid, in the same way that serial killers are not stupid. Pathological, lustful for power, indifferent to suffering, and indifferent to our nation's traditions, sure, but not stupid.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
At that point, spending an extra 1% for better genes doesn't seem as extravagant, and is probably a good investment.
So, what makes that extra 1% a better investment if the donor just gets a better SAT? There is No correlation and that's my point. For all you know, if you have the kid and let him sit in front of the TV, eating Cheetos and playing the PS3, he'll probably become one of those bottom 25% achievers. He may get lucky and be a genius, but you don't know that based on the fact that the donor has a high SAT score. It is non-sequitur! I might as well be saying "I go to movies all the time. If you buy my eggs the kid will be able to be a movie critic!"
Now, what's wrong with adopting a child who has direct need, one from a broken home or some other set of unfortunate circumstances. Then nurture the kid, give them a stable home, good schools and spending that $200K+ on them? I'd say that kid would have a chance and at least be able to be in that top quartile of the success chart, not looking for a job at WalMart. That makes a hell of a lot more sense to me than SAT scores being a predictor of progeny intelligence.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I am trying to decide if you are being perfectly serious here and exactly on topic, or if this is a witty commentary on "dating" and the commoditization of women -- whereby men know what they are looking for and many talentend and intelligent women focus on leaving college with their Mrs. Degree, as it proves to be more profitable long-term than the diploma the university issues.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
My coworker suggests that the process involves a roughly six month process of pretty nasty drugs, which makes the money a lot less attractive.
Are these offers generally for a few eggs, for fifty, for one which implants properly, for one which comes to term, etc?
I am frustrated to note that my Linux box does not allow me to cat /dev/mem
# cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama /dev/mem: Operation not permitted
cat:
This means I cannot check for llamas myself, and yet your signature makes me suspicious that my RAM, too, may be full of llamas. This would explain the recent slowness of my box.
Obviously one can't scrub the llamas out of RAM without finding them, but are there any open source programs which encourage the llamas to leave?
So they're worried that the smart people are going to act stupid and risk their health when offered an extra $2300?
Based on the (unverified) resume for GWB posted in another follow-up (some of which I have read elsewhere), I'd probably believe otherwise. However, his rise to greatness, despite massive, repeated failures, was apparently due to the support of friends, family and those around him, like Cheney.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
While I can't speak for the person you're responding to, I can say that when I was in college I considered donating eggs. Once I found out what the procedure was I decided not to do it, but I got over a dozen phone calls asking me to reconsider, and each time I was offered more money. The last offer I got was for $37.5K - which still wasn't worth it to me for the whole process I would have had to go through. This was back in 1991, and I imagine the prices have gone up since then.
I'm 5'11", was #150 at the time and in spectacular shape (running!), 1560 SATs, and had a 4.0 GPA. Each of those things was enough to boost the asking price substantially.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
It does take brains, but not necessarily his. I always suspected that pre-2006 Bush was little more than a pawn of Dick Cheney. It was only after the Republican Congressional defeat that he started to defy him (ousting Cheney's old buddy Rumsfeld, taking more moderate stances on Cheney's favorite issues, etc.).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
For some weird reason, I'm irked by the standard disclaimer in the article that discourages egg donation for (implied) paying your way through college. Risky as any surgical procedure may be, it's a far cry from any Ayn-Rand-gone-amuk dystopian cliche.
(says one geek with laissez-faire ethics...)
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
Or you could actually adopt. That would be the sensible solution.
Unfortunately we are currently only accepting 6' 120lb 1590 4.2 or better candidates so you will have to breed naturally.
Lots of Smarts != Lots of Common Sense
In fact, I have somewhat noticed the reverse in many situations. Granted, a smart person has the capacity to better think about a situation and reason out all the possible problems, but, most people don't do that to begin with.
Besides, high SAT scores != smart, either.
That's honestly amazing. If you were a woman today with a fertility problem such that you needed an egg retreival done from your own body, for your own use, and were paying 100% out of pocket.. it would cost you under $8k for the entire procedure and medicines. Additional stuff [like doing an IVF fertilization and re-inserting an embryo] would cost more, of course.
So the high price offered for donor eggs must be attributed to the following:
- the tremendous invasiveness of the procedure, to be borne by someone with no non-financial stake in the process
- the desirability and scarcity of your "high quality" donor eggs.
- any part of the contract that has a performance guarantee, i.e. they will keep doing egg retreivals on you until "they" are satisfied, and all of this is covered under the original agreed price
The funny thing about the donor egg market is that people ought to be looking at _your_ mom as an additional fitness indicator: IIRC, all of your immature egg cells were present when you were in-utero.
I wonder if anyone pays 100k for "Ivy League daughter of an Ivy League Daughter" :)
What part of the procedure made you uninterested? I'm familiar with what's involved [see: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1599004&cid=31661810 ] but 35k is an awful lot of seed cash to pass up if you are going to finish school debt free [which I'd hope, given your academic performance].
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Part of the pricing was, actually, exactly that - I am, genetically speaking, rather lucky, and my parents and grandparents were fairly accomplished. I filled out a rather detailed screener and had a physical as part of the process before I dropped out. I think my parents and grandparents were a big part:
- One case of cancer in my family, ever, in the case of my grandfather who used to work with radiation; he died at age 94.
- No heart attacks or other coronary disease in my family.
- Other grandfather died of a stroke in his late 90's.
- Maternal grandmother lived to 102, paternal grandmother to 98, died after breaking her hip falling down a flight of stairs.
- Both parents had advanced degrees (JD & PhD, both from UofC)
- Both parents were in robust good health, despite in the case of my father having smoked for 20+ years (World War II got him hooked)
- The only people in my family with any kind of health problems were my half siblings, all of whom have weight issues (their mom had weight issues too)
So yeah, if you want to buy genes, I guess mine are pretty good - pure luck, but it doesn't look like there are any likely bad surprises.
As for what got me to decline to "donate":
One was the need to go on a hormone cocktail that would have likely caused some pretty substantial moodswings and other issues while I was in the middle of an incredibly intense courseload, combined with the harvesting procedure and the possibility (fairly remote, but still possible) that it might render me infertile later.
Two was that I met one of the couples - I got pretty far along in the process and it was NOT an anonymous kind of thing with this group - and I think their incredible intensity (to an EXTREMELY creepy level) for the idea of having a baby coupled with speaking about me as if I weren't in the room (though I kind of understood that) just made me incredibly depressed at the notion. I understand the idea of being passionate about having a child, but it just felt as if they were TOO intense - helicopter parents before the kid was even born.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
The funny thing about the donor egg market is that people ought to be looking at _your_ mom as an additional fitness indicator: IIRC, all of your immature egg cells were present when you were in-utero.
What do you mean? The eggs form while still in utero, but they come from the babies cells which contain both maternal & paternal genes.
Not surprisingly, higher SAT scores correlate with a higher eventual annual income, something to the tune of $20k/yr per 40 points in the combined SAT score (critical reading + math + writing). Assuming wages increase at the inflation rate of 3%, income is earned from ages 23 through 65, and a discount rate of 10%, the average additional lifetime earning potential of +100 points equates to $162k in present dollars.
Obviously not all eggs result in a baby; only about 10% of eggs result in a live birth. Even so, the economic value of higher SAT scores makes the $2350 look pretty trivial.
As for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine discouraging "compensation based on donors' personal characteristics"...well, they're exactly not raising my kid are they?
Being 5'11" is actually a selling point? That seems very strange to me, considering how powerful the sexual selection pressures are for women to be between 5'2" and 5'4". To the point that many women have an avowed preference for being 8" shorter than their partner. The selection criteria of the prospective parents seems very unusual to me.
You could help produce numerous bright and healthy people. Instead, people of inferior quality will be created.
Hopefully you will at least go the natural route. You can consider it to be a career option that contributes more to society than anything else you could possibly do. You can produce at least a dozen wonderful children.
If that's not your thing, please reconsider the egg donation. Never mind the money; this is something you can do to benefit the world.
Concerned about eggs being treated as commodities ... the American Society for Reproductive Medicine discourages compensation based on donors' personal characteristics.
Basing compensation on characteristics of the egg causes differentiation in the market, and prevents eggs from becoming a commodity. The ASRM is making no sense.
Not really - both were fairly tall, so that's one part of it. But there's also this societal thing where taller people are seen, rightly or wrongly, as being more serious, capable, charismatic, what-have-you.
As for the 8" shorter - I've actually dated a guy who was almost 7' tall, and it was fucking hilarious. We went as Frankenstein & Bride of for Halloween and rocked the look. I've also dated a guy who was 5'4" and that was likewise pretty funny - jokes about him needing mountain climbing gear etc. I prefer to date people around my height - less neck strain (just kidding) - but it's just a preference. I bet most people are similar - sure, they'd like someone taller/shorter than they are, but it's just a plus, not a requirement.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Damn. 1180's not so bad, so I didn't bother retaking it. I still got into the university of my choice.
Learned a big lesson, though. Purple Microdot can be pretty sketchy stuff, and its all SETTING.
Throw the horsie some sugar cubes! Oh LOOK! It's all PAISLEY!!!
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
We're talking about humans here, are we not? Human females don't lay fucking "eggs." Female humans produce an ova; an ovum.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
So that’s the reason women do so much stretching in their aerobic courses?
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Actually I wasn't guessing. It's a result from the literature, such as Daniel Nettle's "Women's height, reproductive success and the evolution of sexual dimorphism in modern humans", published in The Proceedings of the Royal Society, and Boguslaw Pawlowski and Grazyna Jasienska's "Women's preferences for sexual dimorphism in height depend on menstrual cycle phase and expected duration of relationship", published in Biological Psychology, among many other papers. It's a minor field of study all by itself, trying to explain why human sexual dimorphism is so pronounced compared to many other species, and given our otherwise substantial overlap in physical and mental capability spectrums. If it was just a plus, our average heights should more nearly match, and they don't.
The general consensus as to why dovetails with the opinion of the psychology community which claims (with much evidence) that women are the final arbiters of human reproduction. Basically, you're selecting us to be taller than you. :) Your personal opinion is in the minority of all women, but just based on my own observation, in line with the opinion of many tall women, who often settle down with near height partners.
Anyway, your story made me wonder if there's a significant deviation in the selections of people looking for egg or sperm donors. Presumably the overriding criteria there is still the attempt to select near to their own phenotype. If she was close to your height, I guess it's not such an interesting question after all.
If you do allow people to sell their kidneys, would you also provide funds so that poor people could compete on equal footing with the rich when it comes to getting a life-saving transplant, so there's rough parity in opportunity to survive, much like there is with food?
I don't see why. It's not fair that somebody who has worked to earn money be unable to use it. That's like taking the money away.
There also aren't tiers of organs - it's pretty much one-size-fits-all - so in the case of a free market for vital organs you wind up with the rich getting to live and the poor getting nothing
Nope.
First there is the issue of imperfect matches. The worse the match, the more anti-rejection drugs need to be used and the more the organ will degrade.
Then there are other issues. The donar may be old, a smoker, infected, dead for quite a while, etc. Surgeons are transplanting kidneys with cancer (chop the cancer off and the kidney is good!) and lungs from smokers.
It'll be right up something, that's the [w]hole point.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The parent is right about kidneys and every other donate-able organ. Receiving an organ costs $$$$$. Everyone else in the organ supply pipeline gets paid -- except the donor. It's no wonder that lack of donations is the bottleneck.
The danger of abuse and fraud can be kept to a reasonable level for $ (or at most $$) worth of enforcement. That's a bargain compared to the overall $$$$$ spent on each transplant, let alone compared to the value of the lives saved.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)