Assistive reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization have helped many people have children. Behind many of these births are egg donors, whose experiences remain largely invisible in public narratives and scholarship. As reproductive technologies change—along with the ethical and policy challenges they raise—the role of egg donors will too. 

On this episode, host Jason Lloyd is joined by Emily Packard Dawson, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan Medical School whose work focuses on the ethics of emerging reproductive technologies. In our Winter 2026 issue, Dawson reviewed a book by Diane M. Tober called Eggonomics: The Global Market in Human Eggs and the Donors Who Supply Them. Dawson discusses egg donors and the donation process, and what advances in reproductive technologies might mean for them. 

Resources

Read Emily Packard Dawson’s review of Eggonomics: The Global Market in Human Eggs and the Donors Who Supply Them. 

Check out the National Academies workshop report, “In Vitro–Derived Human Gametes as a Reproductive Technology: Scientific, Ethical, and Regulatory Implications: Proceedings of a Workshop” to learn more about in vitro gametogenesis.