Market Freedom or Exploitation?

As a biomedical researcher I have conducted studies that involved reimbursing study volunteers monetarily for their time and inconvenience. This usually creates a tension between what we the investigators would like to pay to facilitate recruitment and what institutional review boards (IRBs) will allow before it is considered “coercement.” This is particularly worrisome for people of modest means who might be more susceptible to accepting the risk involved with a particular study which they might otherwise forego. Therefore, it is unusual that a volunteer is paid more than a couple hundred dollars.

Alternatively, a recent WSJ article reported that many young women are selling their eggs for upward of $3000-$8000! "Whenever the employment rate is down, we get more calls,’ says Robin von Halle, president of Alternative Reproductive Resources.” Where is the concern for coercement here? Certainly, the hormone stimulation and invasive procedures needed to obtain a woman’s eggs are much more risky than the vast majority of research projects I’ve reviewed. On the other hand, recent history has informed us that anything that promotes the reproductive freedom -industrial complex gets a free pass from the otherwise regulatory-happy government oversight agencies.