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Students sell ova in black market

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An illegal trade in female ova is booming in Beijing, targeting girl students from famous universities, who can sell their eggs at prices ranging from several to tens of thousands of yuan,the Beijing News reported Monday.

Ova traders negotiate through agencies in a café in Beijing on Oct 22, 2011. [Photo/CFP]

Usually an egg is sold for 5,000 yuan (US$786), but the price can rise to as high as 30,000 yuan if the sellers are students at Peking University and Tsinghua University, considered two of the best in China, the report said.

Under Chinese law, it is illegal to buy human eggs or receive them for free. Only women who have extra eggs while undergoing vitro fertilization can donate eggs to others. But this is extremely rare and unlikely to happen, said Xue Qing, a doctor at the Maternity and Children's Hospital of Peking University.

However, the ban has spurred an underground market where infertile couples are happy to pay 50,000 to 100,000 yuan to agencies to find women willing to sell their eggs.

There are several hundred agencies with thousands of staff providing services to around 10,000 couples each year in the industry, Wang Chao, a man who had been in the business for more than eight years, told the newspaper.

The demand for eggs is huge, Wang added.

More than 10 young girls, who are all from famous universities in Beijing, sat in a café.

Clients - most of whom are couples - sat not far away from the girls. They stared at each girl carefully. A woman client with an LV bag stepped forward to look carefully.

They could not talk directly, but through agents, who conveyed information on the girls' height, blood type, hobbies, etc.

This is a black market for ova and it's a tip of the iceberg in Beijing or the country.

Li Qing (not her real name), 20, a university student in Beijing, underwent an ovum "donation" operation in early 2010.

After physical examination, she was injected with medicine that speeds up the formation of ova, she said. "One needle per day for 8 consecutive days." She didn't feel any different except aches in her arms after each injection.

After that she had to undergo an operation to retrive the ova. It did not involve cutting. A tube was inserted into her vagina before an ovum was taken out and frozen immediately. Li said she felt uncomfortable during the operation; but after a few days she recovered. She got "nutrition fees" before the operation.

"I do not feel regret,"she said, but she said she would never let her friends or relatives know about it.

The ovum was fertilized with sperm outside her body through medical techniques before it was put into a female client or surrogate, said an anonymous staff member of the agency. "This is forbidden in regular hospitals and so it is often done in private or foreign hospitals," he added.

Xue warned that inducing ovulation carries the risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome which could lead to bloating, pulmonary embolism, kidney failure and can even prove fatal.

Experts said as the surgeries were done in private it would be difficult for sellers to protect their rights.

(Shanghai Daily contributed to this story)

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