Confessions of a Serial Egg Donor

by Julia Derek

Growing by nearly 20 percent annually, the business of egg donors is exploding in the United States. Demand for young women’s eggs keeps outstripping the supply in an ever-accelerating pace, prompting the compensation to skyrocket – from $250 per donation in 1984 to $100,000 in some cases today. Every year more outlets are created to satisfy this demand. These infertility businesses are at war to attract top donors, virtually unsupervised by either government or private association. In fact, they have established their own guidelines. And their primary targets are vulnerable college girls… Confessions of a Serial Egg Donor tells the true and disturbing story of how an independent college girl got so caught up by the tens of thousands of dollars she was making on her eggs her body shut down. With brutal honesty, always applying her own brand of humor, she will describe exactly what it was like to be a twelve-time egg donor, including how the broker of her eggs betrayed her viciously in the end.

240 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2004

About the author

Julia Derek is originally from Sweden and is a trainer by day and writer by night. She's the author of several mystery and thriller books.

Reviews

[Kirsten · Rating 1 out of 5]

My library didn't have this book, so I could have A) purchased it from some random person online since it is out of print. or B) Asked my library to get it from a far distant library. Boy am I glad I didn't spend a dime here. Poorly written, poorly edited. Don't title your book like it's an expose if all you're exposing is how uninformed and cavalier you were when you went through a long and involved series of medical processes. Don't come crying to me.

[Julie Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

My husband bought me this book as I have been donating eggs in Australia for 4 years now and he thought it may be interesting for me. Here we don't get paid so a lot of the story line was very shocking to me-mostly about the complete disconnect the writer shows with what she is doing. The writing was not fantastic and hard to keep my interest. Frankly there just didn't seem much point to the story.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, thought provoking read. Insight into the lack of oversight of the medical community. Also presented some moral conflicts for the reader to ponder... If you can read into the issues really at hand. Who allows a donor to donate 10 times, producing over 20 eggs each time?

[Jen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Could have been fascinating, but was painful and annoying. Didn't like her at all. Very shallow, vain, whiney. Disappointing.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

The perspective is interesting and I wish there were more books out there from donors, but I found the author herself fairly immature, unlikable, and shallow. She emphasizes her petulant snotty attitude every time professionals tried to warn her about donating too many times, assumed there were no valid reasons. She emphasizes the novelty of being an "egg" donor with attention seeking behavior, and casually blows off the implications of eugenics, as she talked about the compensation for donating. I could go on but I'll include one quote that says it all:

"why NOT pay to get a child with the absolute best genes. We all that a healthy, smart, and - even more important, beautiful child would have an easier time in life."

[Mariya · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Confessions of a serial egg donor" is by far my favorite book written by Julia Derek. Her writing is brilliant and vivid. It made me feel almost physically the pain that the main character is going through.

This book leads the reader towards the ever-lasting dilemma of the ethical and the material in our society. The shocking factor is that Julia and many other college girls just like her would risk their most precious possession- their health, for a ridiculously low and insignificant compensation for their eggs. They would expose themselves to an unidentified health risk and life-lasting consequences which is simply despicable.

The truth is that we live in a material world and there should not be any other reason for a woman to go through such painful and ugly process unless she makes a fortune out of it.