Monday October 25

For Sale On The Web: Ovarian Eggs Of Beautiful Women

What price beauty or even good looking children?

An entrepreneurial fashion photographer from Malibu Monday opened a Web site
to auction the ovarian eggs of beautiful women on the Internet, with opening
bids of $15,000 going up to $150,000.

``Welcome to ronsangels.com -- the only Web site which provides you with the
unique opportunity to bid on eggs from beautiful and healthy women,'' said
photographer Ron Harris' Web site.
The site -- which came under fire from experts in medical ethics -- also
advised recipients they must not only be able to afford the eggs, they must
also have ``substantial financial resources to guarantee that the children
that are born from these matings have a financially secure and stable
life.''

Harris estimated the medical costs of assisted reproduction at $20,000 to
$50,000. Harris' fee is 20 percent of the highest bid, which is in addition
to the bid. The donors get 100 percent of the winning bid.

On the Web site, Harris said he had three donors -- all struggling
actresses -- and was looking for more. ``As a donor you must be beautiful,
healthy and between 18 and 30 years old. You the donor determine the lowest
price you will accept and the date that you wish the bidding to stop.''

Potential donors can e-mail Harris at cs+ronsangels.com, his Web site says.
Would-be bidders visiting Harris' Web site, www.ronsangels.com, have to pay
a monthly fee of $24.95 for details of the models, including their ages and
measurements.

Harris was not available for comment Monday, but he was quoted by USA Today
newspaper as saying, ``What mother wants an ugly child ... we bid for
everything else in this society, why not eggs?''

One of the would-be beautiful donors, Misty-Lee McFern, 26, a struggling
actress from Arcadia, a suburb of Los Angeles, told the newspaper she was
asking $50,000 for her eggs. ``I'd rather do this than do Playboy or
Penthouse,'' she said.

Nicole Newman, 25, of Los Angeles, told USA Today acting was ``a tough
business'' and she was now studying music at college. Newman said she was
selling her eggs to pay for her musical education and had put a price of
$30,000 on her eggs, figuring if she sells one set a year for the next four
years that will pay for her board and tuition.

``There are 6.1 million infertile women in America who are looking for eggs
so that they can have children,'' Harris' Web site said. ``Many are opting
for eggs from dissimilar donors. There was even an Asian couple who chose an
egg from a blue-eyed blond Scandinavian woman. Or you could choose the girl
who most resembles you. A better looking version of you,'' it added.

But George Annas, a professor of health law at Boston University and a
member of the ethics committee of the American Society for Reproductive
medicine, said Harris' claims of beautiful children from beautiful donors is
at least ``deceptive and misleading,'' not to mention ``ethically
ludicrous.''

``There is no guarantee that the baby produced from these eggs will be
beautiful or handsome. Just look at all the beautiful women in the world
whose children look nothing like them. The only way you could ever guarantee
a beautiful child would be to clone a beautiful woman,'' he said.
Possibly aware that sperm necessary to fertilize the donor eggs has a say in
the looks of the resulting child, Harris promised on his Web site he will
soon hold a sperm auction with sperm donated by handsome young men.

And it is cheaper than the eggs, with prices ranging from $10,000 to
$50,000.