Back in 2005, The World Egg Bank, helped a Lexington, Kentucky couple become pregnant with
frozen donor eggs for the first time. Although sperm banks have been around for decades, assisting couples or single women conceive wanted children with frozen donor eggs is a relatively new technology “I think everybody should know this option is available,” says Wendy Kennedy, first woman pregnant from The World Egg Bank’s donor egg bank.
Now a woman who needs young, healthy and fertile eggs to conceive a child of her own can contact The World Egg Bank, based in Phoenix, Arizona, and get “matched” with a woman whose eggs are frozen. The eggs are shipped anywhere in the world, thawed, fertilized with the husband’s sperm and transferred as an embryo to a waiting woman who wishes to experience the pregnancy and birth of her baby.
There are many reasons for infertility, but the most common problem for women over age 35 is simply that their eggs are getting to older and becoming less viable. Diana Thomas, CEO of The World Egg Bank knows this only too well. “I tried for 15 years to have children – I thought that once I wanted them, conception would be easy, but it wasn’t. It was hard, very hard to get pregnant and only after 18 procedures, from low level technology to using a younger woman’s eggs, was I able to have my first son at age 40.”
The World Egg Bank was formed based on new egg freezing methods developed by Dr. Boldt, Scientific Director for the first commercial egg bank worldwide. For five years, Dr. Boldt’s work was overseen by an Institutional Review Board to ensure all professional standards were met. The use of frozen donor eggs has become popular worldwide, and most recent data shows that an 80% thaw survival rate and nearly 50% pregnancy rate is standard.
In 2001, in the US alone over 12,000 women tried to conceive using “fresh” donor eggs. Many of the problems a woman and her physician must overcome when using “fresh” donor eggs are virtually eliminated with a frozen donor egg from the The World Egg Bank. Frozen donor eggs offer unprecedented convenience, eliminate many geographical restrictions as eggs can be shipped worldwide, and remove the risk of “failed” fresh cycles where no eggs are retrieved, as you are guaranteed mature eggs when purchased from The World Egg Bank. You also pay one set price and there are no unforeseen or escalating costs associated with fresh egg donor cycles. Also, the use of frozen donor eggs essentially eliminates any of the current health hazards from infectious disease transmission that may occur a “fresh” donor cycle.
Women who require donor eggs to conceive will have the opportunity to purchase eggs from the The World Egg Bank, which currently has frozen eggs from educated women in their 20’s representing a variety of ethnicities. The World Egg Bank is registered with the FDA and follows or exceeds all
FDA guidelines for infectious disease screening.
