Curious Listener (13:01)

This is in the college?

Storyteller (13:02)

Yeah. Some people are taking pictures of the flyer. I mean, it's good money, but it's not nearly as good as another egg donor help wanted ad that was offering $100,000 for the donor's eggs of a white woman. Must be an athlete under 30 years old. Proven college level athletic ability preferred. Other ads have promised anywhere between 2,000 to $50,000 for a donor. Sometimes the criteria is loose. Anybody is welcome. Anybody with eggs. Other times it's down to a T. Young, healthy intellectual aptitude. Which is just a polite way of saying, we will be following up and verifying your SAT scores. Physical qualities accepted. Another acceptable way of saying, must be at least 6ft tall and have hazel colored eyes. If this is you, give us your eggs right now. In theory, it's not a bad deal. In theory. If you forget about the part where high values are placed on donors with specific characteristics, which one professor states could raise eugenic concerns. If you try to forget that and make this a perfect hypothetical world. And the fact that this ad is posted in a college campus, which would target financially vulnerable college students who are just trying to survive and get a degree in this economy. If you ignore all of that, I guess it's kind of an even deal. One party gets money, one party gets eggs that they desperately want. It could be a good exchange. Perhaps. But what happens if someone wants to make money from egg donations but they themselves don't have the eggs? What do they do then? There's a lot of good Reasons that someone does not want to donate their eggs. Religious, political, ethical, personal. Or maybe they're just like, hey, my genetic material is less than stellar. This is me, okay? I hide in the bathroom about three times a week to cry while contemplating my entire life. I don't think that you want my jeans by any means. I have allergies that'll take me out in two seconds. Or maybe you do want that. Maybe you do want all of your kids and you want to have all these people out and about. But you don't like the idea that now every single person of a certain age that passes you, you wonder, is that my kid? What if that's my kid? You're not my kid. Right, because you kind of look like me. But one big component that people have said I never want to be an egg donor is the pain and health complications. The process of retrieving an egg is anything but simple and easy. First you have to go through hormones. Thousands of dollars worth of hormones are just handed to you in this clear ziploc bag, if you will. Bye. Have a good time. Be safe for 10 days at home by yourself. You're not a nurse, you're not a doctor. You have to inject two drugs straight into your stomach by yourself. I mean, I guess you could have someone else do it for you. Don't have your husband do it for you. They don't know what the fork they're doing the two drugs. One stimulates follicle growth and that's the. The eggs grow in follicles and then you have another one that prevents premature ovulation. So to put it so simply that it could potentially be incorrect. In theory, it's the same. Your body needs to create a bunch of eggs and keep them safe inside of you so that they can come and extract them. Now, usually it's one egg per month. Month.

Curious Listener (16:16)

Right. But they're gonna have mode sometimes 50. What?

Storyteller (16:20)

You're just creating as many eggs as possible and then you're making sure that they don't prematurely, I guess, mature.

Curious Listener (16:27)

Wow.

Storyteller (16:28)

So you have to prematurely ovulate, if you will, if you want to be more technical. So they have to keep them inside your ovaries until they're ready to be extracted by the egg retrieval.

Curious Listener (16:37)

Wow.

Storyteller (16:37)

Okay, process. The shots themselves are pretty bad. You end up getting a balloon sized bruise on your stomach and it has to be injected through your lower abdomen. You run out of fresh places, the shots, which even if you don't poke the exact same spot, your entire lower body is bruised and Sore, so everything feels painful, one netizen writes. I poke around my skin until I locate a spot that isn't sensitive. I have to just grab a piece of flesh between my fingers. I breathe out, I stick it in, I relax the pinch, and then I inject super slowly. But it's not even just 20 minutes of pain every day. And then you're good. The hormones, they're lingering. This does not go away, Runnetizen writes. I didn't realize how much the hormones would affect me mentally. One of the hormones made me not sleep, which made all my other side effects so much worse. Three nights of not sleeping, feeling depressed, and experiencing the worst mood swings of my life. Never have I ever felt so uncomfortable with my own body. My body felt like a stranger's. None of my pants fit. My acne was a disaster. Everything hurt. Another netizen writes. My belly is bulging out. I'm hungry all the time. I have headaches nightly and my joints hurt. I can barely squat down. My legs feel stiff. It's the worst thing I've ever experienced. Hands down, my mind doesn't even feel like my own because it's whacked out, zonked out on so many hormones. I have zero emotional regulation, and yet I feel totally empty and hollow a lot of the times. But if you want to work out, let some of that stress out. You can't even work out if you work out because your ovaries are so swollen they could twist with movement, physical movement of the body, which will result in what can only be described as the Satan himself spawning inside of your ovaries and hosting a dance party for all his little demons. That's what they say. It feels like that's just the hormones. Then it's time to actually take out the eggs. Retrieve the eggs. The overview is something like this. Step one, Sedation or anesthesia. The level depends on the clinic, the country, the person's health requirements, but most of the time, anesthesia is highly, highly appreciated. Step 2. An ultrasound is inserted into the private part to locate the ovarian follicles that contain the mature eggs. Step three. A thin, long, hollow needle is guided through the vaginal wall and into each of the follicles. The fluid within the follicles, which contains the eggs, gets suctioned into the tube, vacuumed out of you. And then step four is the recovery and post procedural steps. A lot of people say the actual procedure itself is the easiest part. Because you're knocked out, you don't have to do anything you shouldn't feel too much. But when you wake up, that's where it gets bad. People have differing opinions. Some people say it's the worst pain of their lives and they've given birth before. Others say it's a few days of resting in bed and you recover. One netizen who had a bad ride. Egg retrieval alone is absolutely brutal. They ultrasound you to find the eggs ready to release. Then a foot long large boar needle is threaded up your vagina and stabbed through the upper wall. One person writes, completely robs you of your life. Okay? It's incredibly emotionally taxing and physically taxing. The cramps and bloating afterwards after the eggs were retrieved were so bad, I doubled in size. I mean I talked to two girls in the lobby and they were just like, yeah, it's going to be like that for two weeks. It's really bad. Why aren't we warned about this? Why aren't first timers coached about how bad this is? And again, there are a lot of valid reasons that I can think of of why someone would want to go through this. Because they want to have children. Because the idea of not having their own family is worse than the idea of getting their eggs retrieved or they want to help others have children. There are solid reasons out there. But what if you have to go through all of this because somebody is holding you hostage and making you. Because they're farming your eggs.

Narrator (20:44)

Our state has changed a lot in the last 140 years. We know because MultiCare has been here guided by a single purpose. Making our communities healthier. That comes from making courageous decisions, partnering with local communities to grow programs and services and expanding healthcare access to those who need it most. Together we're building a healthier future. Learn more@ multicare.org in the year of.

Storyteller (21:22)

2024, there were 257Thais who fell victim to human traffickers. That's in 2024. And those are the ones that were actually rescued. So out of 257, 53 victims were found in Thailand. 204 were found in other countries. More than half of those victims were rescued by a foundation in Thailand called the Pavina Foundation. So it would make sense that you go to them when you have information about a huge international trafficking ring that involves the black market. A woman burst through the doors of the foundation one day in September. This is September of 2024. She has just escaped. She has been trafficked to a different country. She escaped and now she's here to tell the foundation, I mean beg them really, that they need to help. There's at least 100 other Thai girls trapped in there. They're being held captive. What do they want from them? Their eggs. What do you mean they want their eggs? Headlines all over the world would later read, thai Woman rescued from Human Egg Farm in Georgia. Women kept as slaves in Human Egg Farm. A lot of netizens initially thought Georgia in the US which is considered US Defaultism. Not everything is about the US okay, but a lot of other netizens thought women are being kidnapped to be exploited for work. To work at a chicken egg farm and they have to provide hard labor. Is that what's happening right now? This is a crazy headline. What's going on? One comment reads. When I read about Human Egg Farm, I had hoped that this was just some sort of bombastic title and it'll just be Human Traffick on a Chicken Egg Farm. But it's not about chicken eggs. It's about human eggs. They want human eggs. So what are they doing with all of these human eggs? A woman in Greece by the name of Maria is called into the police station. There's been a theft. She's sitting there with two police officers and a woman. She's like, who the hell is this woman? She's not in uniform, so she's not a police officer. I'm a psychologist. They only bring in psychologists for really bad cases. Right. What's going on? Ma'am, do you recall about four years prior you had your eggs retrieved at a fertility clinic? Yeah, and I had my son about three years ago. He's. What's. What's going on? Yes, but do you recall how many eggs they harvested? They told me I only had six harvestable eggs. The police are quiet. Why? What's going on, Maria? The clinic lied to you. They actually harvested double that. The other eggs that were never told to you about, they were used to create embryos for other women. There's been a theft. The fertility clinic stole Maria's other eggs, told her she only had 6, she had 12, and then used those eggs to create embryos for other women. Why? Maria's so confused? It's not like she has special eggs. She even knows it herself. She admits she's not exceptional in that department of, you know how. The higher the education, the more cost for the eggs. She's not Ivy League educated, which, again, those are the standards not set by me. In fact, Maria's in her late 30s. She was a previous smoker. She would have technically been a pretty bad candidate for egg donation. But not only that she never consented to this. And this is not just something that's happening in Greece. A fertility clinic in UC Irvine paid more than $24 million to settle lawsuits after they took eggs from patients without their consent and used them to make other women pregnant. What? And the settlement likely should have been a lot more. But at the time, nobody could even they were argu Definitive cost price of a human egg they're like, what is a human egg even worth, really? We don't know it. It depends on the specifications of the egg donor. So there's really no value of a human egg that everybody can agree upon?

Curious Listener (25:01)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Storyteller (25:03)

It happens in other parts of the world because ultimately it's a billion dollar industry. And when there is that much money on the line, people start doing some crazy things. A super producer is somebody whose body reacts so strongly to the hormones that they can get about 20 plus eggs per egg retrieval. Some people will even have 50 eggs in a retrieval, but you don't want that in a regular cycle. One egg is released during egg retrieval. You take hormone medications to induce a supra ovulation of sorts, which typically produces around 13 to maybe 20 eggs in both ovaries. But if you produce more than 15 eggs at a single given time, you are at risk of developing ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, otherwise known as ohss. One netizen describes it as pain and extreme bloating and pressure from my lower abdomen up to my chest, really bad backache from base to shoulders, diarrhea, shortness of breath when the bloating was at its worst. I was sleepless. I couldn't even lie down and I was throwing up. I was like a beached whale. I couldn't even bend over when I was in the car. Every bump in the car hurt. Another person writes, I had severe abdominal pain for 6 days post ER. One moment where I was curled up in a soaking wet ball, dry heaving, uncontrollably sweating. My husband was helplessly asking if there's anything that he could do to help. We drove to the doctor. 30 minute drive was the most excruciating thing I've ever experienced. Every bump in the road caused unbearable pain to my ovaries and abdomen that nearly caused me to puke and throw up. The doctors tell her that her ovaries are literally floating in fluid, so the sharp pains that she's feeling are her ovaries just floating and hitting her body in different places and rotating and twisting and moving around. The only way that they can provide any sort of relief is to drain the fluid immediately. Sounds great, right? But how, you may wonder Vaginally with a needle, no anesthesia. She says she felt much better after getting the fluid drained but not back to normal. Most people say that you will know if you have OHSS because within a day you go to sleep and you wake up looking eight months pregnant. The worst part is sometimes people don't even take you seriously. One netizen writes, I called my doctor and I was about to go to the er, but she said that I was probably okay because I was still speaking. I mean it's just been a journey. Another Comments I didn't have it that bad, but I was still bedridden for three weeks and had anywhere between 12 to 15 pounds of fluid hanging out at any given time. I had to sleep sitting up otherwise the flu would find itself into my lungs. So but they said it wasn't that bad. Some people say they ended up with 30 pounds of additional fluid inside their bodies, which took two weeks for them to be fully drained and to be able to even walk again. One netizen writes, Truly was one of the scariest experiences of my life and extremely traumatic. I had to start seeing a therapist shortly after because of reoccurring panic attacks. I lost about 40% of my hair from all the stress and trauma therapy and medical leave was an absolute lifesaver. It took me me two months to get back to my baseline normal. The more you donate eggs, the higher the chance that you will get OHSS. And if what the whistleblower from September 2024 is saying that there are a hundred Thai girls held up in the country of Georgia forced to donate their eggs. I don't even know if donating is the right word here. Forced to take their eggs out, then that's a lot of eggs and that's very frequently that this is happening. Are they okay? One popular donor in California states the US industry guideline limits egg donors to just six cycles. You can only donate your eggs six times. The guidelines are in place because the more you donate eggs, it's believed, the higher your chance of suffering from health complications. But also there's population concerns because if you donate too many times and it results in too many births, basically you have to factor in the probability that two people will meet, get immediately involved in some intimate activities and they may be related without even knowing. To be more crass, they're trying to make sure non intentional incest does not happen between a bunch of half siblings. But one egg donor states alarmingly there's no way for a clinic to track egg retrievals from other clinics. So a nurse just asks you, how many times have you donated? I always just say four. Even though it's been more than that. Four is a good number. And then after that, the clinics will stop asking you because they don't want to stop taking your eggs. They also want to make money. The egg donor is probably getting paid six to $10,000 for a round of IVF. It costs someone, a couple, anywhere between 30 to $60,000.

Curious Listener (29:45)

Wow.

Storyteller (29:46)

You can't. The fertility clinics are making a lot of money, right?

Curious Listener (29:50)

So one egg donation is 46 that they pay, but they get multiple eggs.

Storyteller (29:57)

So usually the batch of eggs is considered one. Oh, okay. But in theory, if a human baby farm were to exist, that means that the captives are forced to have their eggs extracted every month, every other month, if we're being super nice, which is not only highly unethical, aside from the human trafficking aspect, but health wise, they're getting exposed to a lot of complicated health risks. One of the victims of the egg farm, a woman by the name of Ms. Na, she tells the Thai authorities it was all there in a Facebook post. You go to the country of Georgia, become a surrogate mother, and get paid $800 a month during your pregnancy. And then once you give birth, you get paid like $20,000 in cash. Side note, some people would say that they saw the ad and it was around $11,000. Other people said it was closer to $18,000, but it's somewhere in that range. It is a straightforward, easy plan. I mean, minus the fact that you have to travel to Georgia and there's no nonstop flights from Thailand, no direct flights. And then obviously you got to get pregnant, give birth to a child that is not your own. But other than that, it's pretty relatively straightforward. The job offer, it's not too good to be true. It's not. The prince of some faraway country is asking you to marry him. This is a job and you get paid for the job. It's also really good money. I did some researching into this. Now, if you've worked in Thailand or you are Thai, I would love some additional insight. When I first tried to see the average salary in Thailand, it kept coming up at at 35,000 USD, which in turn didn't make sense for a lot of people to take this surrogacy job for $18,000. Because if you're talking about a full pregnancy and then the before and afterwards, you're talking about a year of Work. But going on forums, a lot of Thai people have stated the average salary calculations are based off of the main cities in Thailand, but also expats who are remote working or different countries that have set up there and they're moving in from different countries to work there. They state that if you just factor in the Thai locals, it's more so 5 to 6000 USD a year, which then makes more sense in the context of this case. The surrogacy job is like 2 to 3 years of work in 10, maybe 10 months, maybe 12 months. These posts are aggressively trying to recruit Thai women. And naturally it works. It's a job. People apply. It's assumed over 100 women flew out under this pretense. They're going to live with a couple in Georgia. They're going to conceive their child, give birth, get paid, and come back home. There's no egg donation. They're getting the embryo of said couple. Okay, let's say there's a wife and husband. The wife is going to provide the eggs during ivf, and then it's going to be the embryo that is inserted into the Thai woman, and she's going to be a surrogate. So it's not her genetic baby. Right, if that makes sense.

Curious Listener (32:47)

Yeah.

Storyteller (32:48)

Which a lot of people are more open to. That versus carrying their own child, I guess. I mean, genetically speaking, biologically speaking, if you will. You're gonna be fed, cared for by the couple so you can give birth and provide them their one true wish, which is to start a family. That's the plan. But First, Dubai. Dubai. Ms. Na says that she met up in a Thailand airport with 10 other Thai women who are going there for the same job. And two Chinese nationals came and met with them. Them. These are the middlemen of the agency. They're connecting the couple in Georgia to all of these women. This is their job. They're like a recruiting agency. They're a fertility agency. So the 12 of them, there's 12, 10 Thai women and the two Chinese nationals, they first fly to Dubai, where they stay for three nights, staying at a hotel, all paid for by the agency. Ms. Na, one of the victims, she says that nobody knew each other. Like, out of the 10 Thai women, not a single one of them were like, oh, we're friends, we're sisters, that we're doing this together. Like, this is my family friend. Nobody. They're all complete strangers, but everybody's getting along. And when they're in Dubai, like the two Chinese nationals, the. What do you call them? The Agency members, they're encouraging them to take pictures and to post online like they're traveling to Dubai. Like, when else are you going to be in Dubai? This is crazy. So they have a few good nights. Then from Dubai they fly to Armenia where they again stay at another hotel and they take a bunch of pictures. Then from there they take a 10 hour train ride to the country of Georgia. That's where they're asked, could we get your passport please? Why do you need our passports? It's very complicated. So we've been working with this agency for a really long time and there have been cases, not a lot, just very few, where someone will be going through the surrogacy and decide, I actually want this baby and I'm going to flee and all of the money and it just becomes a legal nightmare. Because genetically, I mean, you're talking about, there's contracts in place and it becomes an international issue. So could we please just get your passports? But if you ever decide that you want to travel or you want to do something that requires your passport, just let us know. We can okay it. Or even if you decide that you want to keep the baby, that's not okay. But we at least need to all talk about it and figure out the next process. It's not an unreasonable request. They seem pretty open to pretty much everything. They're like, if you want your passport, just let us know. Otherwise, we're just doing this to be safe. So everybody gives their passports. The guides log all 10 women's passports, and now it's time to be taken to their host family that they're going to be surrogates for instead of being driven to a little suburban home with a white picket fence and a loving but desperate couple who just want a family as much as they want to breathe. The girls get dropped off at what can only be described as a warehouse of women, a building filled with 60 to 70 Thai women per building. Cramped. There's about a hundred Thai women there being kept. According to Ms. Na, some of them likely took a 180 degree U turn to turn right back, go back to Thailand, but they're blocked. You're gonna be arrested if you try to leave this building. Technically, you're in the country of Georgia illegally. If you leave, you walk out, you try to scream, you're gonna be arrested.

Curious Listener (36:03)

Wait, what do you mean they're there illegally?

Storyteller (36:05)

I guess they're trying to insinuate that you came on a tourist visa, but you are here for work, you're gonna be arrested and you don't even know the language. Instead of becoming surrogate mothers, according to Ms. Na, each of the women were told that they will be harvested for their eggs. They will be given hormones to stimulate their ovaries, and once a month they will be put under. Their eggs will be taken from them. And every month the only way out is to pay the kidnappers $2,000 in cash as a ransom. The captors are allegedly telling them that if you donate your eggs for three months, once three egg retrievals, you can leave or you pay the ransom. Because we, we hosted you at all these hotels, we flew you to Dubai, we took you to Armenia, we took you sightseeing. Most of these girls are in their 20s and 30s, with the oldest being, I think, 37. They don't have that kind of money. $2,000. Again, many locals have stated that the annual salary In Thailand is five to six thousand dollars. Two, three thousand dollars is a lot. Ms. Na says she was shocked by the unhealthy state of some of these young women that were trapped in there. They're constantly crying and moaning and there is, there's no family, there's no surrogacy. There's not a Georgian couple in sight. Ms. Na states the entire compound is run by what she can describe as, quote, Chinese gangsters. All she knows is there are constant waves of Chinese men coming in and out of the buildings. Yeah, it was the whole thing. And now nobody is getting their passport back without providing anything. Eggs, which a lot of people feel, don't we know this story already. Is this not the Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood? And just to make sense of it, a surrogate I. Even the best surrogates that you could find. I'm sure if you do, if you're a celebrity and you have these private surrogacy programs, it's a lot more. But typically in America it's around a hundred thousand dollars and it's a lot. But in Georgia it's a lot less. And it's, it's, it's a lot more complicated. There's also a higher fee paid to the actual surrogates versus egg retrieval. It seems like it's more profitable is the speculation here. Cuz people are like, why don't they just use them as surrogates? I'm sure you could find a lot of families that need surrogates.

Curious Listener (38:22)

Yeah, but they're doing something else, right?

Storyteller (38:24)

Yes. They're taking their eggs.

Curious Listener (38:26)

Yeah. And then selling it to.

Storyteller (38:28)

That's where all the conspiracies Come in. Now, interestingly, there are lots of theories about this case. One is, what the hell are they doing with the eggs? There are so many conspiracies that have come from that question. And two, some conspiracies debate if this is even real, if this has actually even happened, or if someone paid these three young women from Thailand to say these things, which is a crazy theory, a crazy accusation, a crazy conspiracy. It's kind of an unhinged conspiracy, but it's mostly based of what the Georgian authorities have said about this case. Now, a few things to note. Surrogacy is considered legal in Georgia, which means any surrogacy work with legal contracts are considered legal. Obviously, there are stipulations, but the Georgian government is saying there is nothing wrong with the surrogacy contracts that these Thai women have. They're saying, we looked into these three Thai women, we saw the surrogacy contracts that they have, and there's nothing weird about it. They're not being kidnapped. It seems fine. The Georgian authorities further state, we did our due diligence, we went to this so called warehouse where the women were held captive. And they state, the Georgian authorities state, we spoke to about 70 foreign citizens and none of them, aside from the original three Thai women that reported this human egg farm, plus the additional whistleblower In September of 2024, none of them complained about being held against their will. Okay, so September 2024, the whistleblower escapes, her family pays the ransom, she goes back to Thailand and she contacts the Pavina Foundation. She talks about three specific women that she befriended in the facility that she really wants to help save. The Pavina foundation works with Interpol and saves those three women, pays their ransom, gets them out. The three women then start providing more information about the human egg farm. This was like a few weeks ago, they were rescued, like January 30th. So now more information is coming out. They're doing interviews. Well, one brief interview. And now everybody's wondering, what about the other woman? We got to get them out. What's happening in the egg farm? This is when it breaks, breaks global headlines. The Georgian authorities are saying, none of the women that we found in the warehouses, like 70 of them, none of them complained about being held against their will. In fact, we saw pictures of newborn babies taped against the walls. They said that these are babies that were delivered by residents of the building. So clearly they're being surrogates. They're not being harvested for their eggs. This is all crazy. But the problem here being even The Georgian authorities state that none of these women spoke Georgian and maybe the only translators available were the ones that were running the surrogacy agency, so called agency. They also stated that one woman who did speak Georgian said, we have our documents with us, our passports. If we want to leave, we can leave at any time. I don't know why the girls would say that they're victims of trafficking. She claims that the only reason that some people leave is because they can't conceive the baby, they can't get pregnant, which would defeat the purpose of being a surrogate. We have no clue if this is said by one of the Thai women found in the warehouse, that is a victim or a so called victim, or if this is the statement of one of the ones that are running the agency. We just know that she speaks Georgian. So the Georgian authorities are saying, hey, all the Thai reports that there's a human egg farm. No, we talked to all of them. We didn't really talk to them because they don't speak Georgian. But no, nobody said that they're being held against their will. So you guys are wrong. Which makes everybody a lot more suspicious. This statement has made things trickier because they're essentially stating that this is not real, this is not happening. At least that they can't verify. Now another thing to note, the three women that were rescued in January 30th, they have done an interview and they're completely masked, clothed, they're anonymous, they don't want to be known. So I, a lot of people wonder, what is the incentive of them to make up a crazy lie like this? It doesn't make any sense, right? So people wonder, let's say the story is real, which a lot of netizens feel like it is, right? Because it just doesn't make sense that it would be fake. Why would they be selling the eggs? Who are they selling the eggs to? Because that's a lot of eggs. The first sensible thought netizens have is that this is run by an organized crime group that is very clearly well established and has the abilities to run an enterprise of this nature. Now they're holding people hostage in a country where these people do not know the language and they're being trafficked for their body parts, their eggs. According to some sources, a batch of human eggs is extracted from a person on the planet every 15 seconds. Now, to be fair, most times it's from people who plan to use their own eggs themselves through ivf, or they're freezing their eggs for the future. But a Lot of it is from donors. Except they're not donating anything because like I said, they're getting compensated for their time and pain. They're getting paid. So health wise, there is nothing good that comes from donating eggs, at least not physically. Some doctors have even stated it's more akin to donating a kidney, medically speaking, it's not as harsh, it's not as dangerous as donating a kidney. But on medical charts, the donor gets nothing of positive or neutral value when donating eggs, at least, medically speaking, health wise. So naturally, the payment is supposed to bridge that gap. For first time egg donors, it's six to $10,000 in the U.S. interestingly enough, the fees go up the more frequently you donate eggs. If you're a repeat donor, the fees can easily shoot to 12, $20,000. Why is that? Because you can prove that you've had successful retrievals in the past. Because you can prove, hey, last time I had 30 eggs. And then they're like, okay, well we can at least bet that you're maybe gonna have 30 eggs or 20 eggs this time, 25 eggs. If you're an Ivy League graduate, you can expect between 20 to $50,000 on top of that. Or if you're a RA, you can fetch higher prices. But that's in the US there have rare ethnicity mean. Okay. At one point it was like, I think it's a trend, honestly. Sometimes it's Korean, sometimes it's a certain, like Eastern European. Yeah, yeah.

Curious Listener (44:34)

This is like, I don't. So challenging. So many weird social.

Storyteller (44:40)

Yes. Okay. So I was, I fell into a rabbit hole some places. We're saying that, for example, let's say Korean egg donors are high in demand. It is a mixture of Korean couples who want Korean children that cannot use their own eggs because it hasn't been working. So they're looking for a Korean egg donor. And perhaps at that time, the Korean egg donor population is very low. There's not a lot of Korean women donating their eggs. So that makes the prices a lot higher. Or sometimes it could be like a social thing.

Curious Listener (45:15)

Yeah, yeah.

Storyteller (45:15)

They could be like, hey, I'm really into Korean music these days. I kind of want a Korean baby. Yeah, I fell into a really strange rabbit hole of that. Yeah. But that's in the US There have been instances. Side note, I will say it's more of the former. It's more so like you want someone who looks like you or is the same ethnicity as you typically. But that's in the United States. There have been reports that some parts of the world will only pay out maybe $180 for a batch of eggs. And I say batch because that's the terminology I see used a lot. I'm not calling it a batch of eggs. That's just what I've seen online through sources. Other articles have stated that globally you can expect 1 to $3,000. Obviously it's higher in countries like the US and Western nations, but typically 1 to $3,000 per batch is a safe assumption. Let's say they've got a hundred people, 100 people in there, and they're forcibly donating their eggs. Let's say they get anywhere between $1,500, they're making close to like $900,000 a year. And that's every other month that these 100 women are donating eggs. If you bump it up to every month, that would be a lot more.

Narrator (46:39)

Our state has changed a lot in the last 140 years. We know because MultiCare has been here guided by a single purpose, making our communities healthier. That comes from making courageous decisions, partnering with local communities to grow programs and services, and expanding healthcare access to those who need it most. Together, we're building a healthier future. Learn more@ multicare.org.

Storyteller (47:16)

And now this enterprise or this organization, they're paying for flights, hotels, they're paying for the housing for 100 different women, for food, for supplies, plus all of the costs of freezing eggs. When you keep eggs, it's not cheap. Like you can't just keep them in the fridge, you can't just keep them in a plastic baggie. We're going to go through it, but it's, it's a very expensive medical process. The first conspiracy that people have, which is, I don't even know if I would call it a conspiracy, judging by the headlines, judging by the news that has come out so far about the human egg farm in Georgia, a lot of people believe that the eggs are just being sold as donor eggs. Maybe there's lying on the part of the organization. Maybe they're lying and saying these eggs were consensually donated, voluntarily donated by these people from this nation doing this. And they're lying about these eggs or they're being sold on the black market. A lot of netizens who just read the headlines believe that it's being sold on the black market. But more, more people that are kind of perusing through Reddit and getting into this rabbit hole about this case, they think there's no way, there's no way that they're selling the eggs on the black market, because how many people reasonably go on the black market to buy human eggs? Eggs. That's not even some. And then what? You buy black market human eggs and then you take them to a non black market clinic? What? They're gonna be like, you're crazy. I'm not gonna. What am I gonna do with that? You can't give me that. That's insane. Where did you get these eggs? So a lot of people believe that if this organization is truly doing this, trafficking humans, trafficking people to steal their eggs, they must be selling them to legitimate clinics. Legitimate does not mean not shady. Legitimate does not mean good. I'm just talking legitimate businesses, LLCs. They're selling them to actual clinics who are buying these eggs, probably at a discounted price, and then selling them to the couples that need eggs. And it's crazy because they also have, like, apps for this one woman who is struggling to find an egg donor. She said she was so obsessed at night, she was scrolling through the. The donor app and it was like scrolling through Tinder. She the specs of each donor, and she said it was a really jolting experience, mentally speaking. So, yeah, there's a lot to say about the fertility industry. I would say fertility is complicated in the sense that you want people to be able to have children who desperately want children and will be good parents. But the fertility industry itself is pretty predatory against those women they're doing against those people, those couples. They're doing everything to make a dollar, exploiting all of that. So they're like, yeah, of course I'll help you. Again, I'm not saying anything's wrong with wanting children or wanting to go through ivf. And I think IVF has created so many beautiful families. That's not what I'm saying. I think IVF itself is an advancement in technology and also, I guess, what the human body can do and what we can achieve with our minds and like, create families for people, but at the same time, people are exploiting it. Yeah, just clarifying. They think that they're selling these eggs to these legitimate clinics. Businessweek actually tried to seek data on egg imports and exports in 15 different countries. And they state it's impossible to trace the flow of frozen eggs or even the donors themselves. For example, they were tracking a woman from South America who was donating her eggs into the United States. She actually donated with another friend of hers. The U.S. business Week went to the U.S. fDA and said, hey, can we get a log of all the People that have all the egg imports, human egg imports, they had one of the women, but they didn't list the other. And that's such a clear discrepancy. So truly there's no foolproof, really organized flow of import and exports of eggs. It's really rather unregulated. But then some netizens question, I mean, how many shady legitimate clinics are there that are willing to buy eggs like this? That doesn't make any sense. And also, if you store the eggs in a weird way, they're essentially worthless if you store them the wrong way. And it's very tricky to ship them, get it across borders, customs, which means they're paying for the flight, the hotel, the housing, the supplies, all of this. And probably like hundreds of thousands of dollars of initial medical equipment that they need to start this. Because if you really factor in they have to be stored, these eggs have to be stored in nitrogen tanks. They have to be kept at like negative 320 degrees Fahrenheit. Otherwise the eggs, they're not viable anymore. Even extracting them, you need specialized ultrasound equipment, you need to get general anesthesia, which by the way, the victims have stated that they were, they were under. You have to get anesthesia, you have to get all the medical equipment, you have to get personnel, you need doctors, you need nurses. Even if they're working under the table, they're black market doct doctors. They still have some sort of medical knowledge and they're getting paid some sort of fee. Are they good people? No, but you get what I'm saying. So they need a lot of money, which brings a lot of netizens to believe. What if they're not being sold to clinics? What if they're being sold to research facilities? Yeah, because maybe clinics are a little bit more open to the public. Research facilities, maybe it's not as public facing and you don't really know what's happening. Maybe they're being sold to different research facilities across the world. Maybe not in the U.S. maybe other places. Maybe in the U.S. we don't know.

Curious Listener (52:45)

But also, I feel like if that one was found, wouldn't there be more of these facilities?

Storyteller (52:51)

Yeah, that's what a lot of netizens say. There is no such thing as a one off. Yeah, but again, I don't know. Right. I think every conspiracy afterwards gets a little bit crazier. So we go from egg, egg donation selling to regular clinics, then we go into research facilities. Then some people believe that these eggs are being used to create babies, that they're going to sell into human trafficking. It gets crazier and crazier. Yeah, so that, that's not really a fleshed out theory. I mean, I don't really find any proof other than just really whacked out conspiracy theorists on Twitter that are really like, no, they're making a baby farm somewhere. This is just, just step one of the manufacturing process. They're going to take the eggs and then put them somewhere else and then they're going to create an embryo and then they're going to create these children. Those children are going to be sold into sex trafficking. So it's definitely a rabbit hole that I wouldn't go down. And there's no proof of that. Then you have another group of people that think, wait, none of this makes sense. So first of all, why would they let these women out? If they pay ransom, if you pay the ransom, they get out, they can do exactly what happened, they can alert someone about the black market business and then their whole is up. But one netizen tries to argue, I mean, maybe they're so corrupt, maybe the organization has ties with politics, like political figures, maybe they have ties with the government. So even if you get out, no one believes you, no one's going to do anything. Hence even the Georgian authorities said nothing is happening here. That's a netizen theory. But others say no, it just doesn't make sense. Like why would they pay the ransom, why would they get out? And the US State Departments trafficking in persons report ranked Georgia as a tier one country in 2023. Meaning they do everything to stop human trafficking. Does that mean human trafficking does not take place in Georgia? No, but the US is saying they're doing a good job at trying to curb human trafficking. So is it really that their government is corrupt or like, what's going on? One comment reads, I'm not saying this didn't happen, but I have yet to see when reputable news organizations report on this. So I'm going to reserve judgment for now. Think about the logistics of forced egg donors, you high grade tanks to store eggs and liquid nitrogen, weeks and weeks of IVF processes, and then where are you selling them to? I can't imagine the IVF black market is particularly good. You know, so what's happening? I am open to being proven wrong, but I want news coverage from a well known, respectable news organization. I will say the coverage on this is incredibly slim. I don't know if it's because everything in the US is overpowering on a global scale. There's been so much going on in the US political sphere. Maybe it's that, maybe it's the fact that there's just not enough. Maybe it's the fact that the Georgian authorities have said, no, this is not happening versus the Thai authorities are like, no, something is happening. And it's become a little bit of a diplomatic strange concern. Other people on Reddit have said, maybe it's the fact that Georgia is such a small country. And it's interesting because I do agree that might have played into it. A lot of people read the headlines and started freaking out saying, oh my gosh, this is happening in the United States. Once they found out it's not in the United States and it's in this tiny little country of Georgia, they said, oh, it's not in the US which is crazy because if it's still happening somewhere in the world, you should care about it. But they're like, oh, it's not in the US So they decided it was not important. I don't know. But I will say it is strange to the point where other conspiracies have popped off. They said, what if this has never happened and it's actually a setup? There was one Chinese account that was posting all over Chinese social media saying that this whole story is fake. There were two Chinese surrogacy agencies in Georgia that were, I guess, duking it out, if you will, and one of them decided to take their competition down. So they hired these three Thai women to make up these crazy allegations that they're harvesting human eggs at the other facility and they won't have competition anymore. So a lot of people initially believed that, but when you click on that Chinese account, they don't have any other post but that. Which is weird. Yeah, it's very strange.

Curious Listener (57:07)

Wow. I feel like this is the surface, surface, surface of this whole thing. I don't know.

Storyteller (57:15)

Personally, I. I don't know. Maybe I'm so far into believing in the craziest things that humans can do because of this line of interest and work that I'm in, but I just don't see why anyone would lie. Even the competition theory doesn't make sense. It's such a far fetched theory. I don't know why people would lie about it. And maybe I'm naive. I just don't see how it's a lie. I don't see what anyone would gain from this. I don't see a single party that gains. I don't see the Thai government being like, yes, this is great, we're gaining from this. I Don't see the Pavina foundation gaining from this. I don't see the three women, the four women gaining from this. I don't see anybody gaining from this. There's no, hey, donate money to me because I need to stop this tirade of human egg trafficking. Yeah, there's nothing. It's so strange. And the more that I was going down the rabbit hole, the more the egg industry is insane. It's like a billion dollar industry and a lot of strange things are happening all across the world. Maria from Greece is having her eggs stolen. You see, Irvine was using E patients to make other women pregnant. There's a lot of shady stuff happening, so I just don't see how it's not happening. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong though I will say there is not news coverage from any of the big mainstream media outlets in the United States, but there are from big news outlets in Thailand. What are your thoughts on this? Netizens have been responding to this case the way that you would imagine. Some are just relieved that it's not happening in the US which which again, I think it's crazy. Other people are making chicken egg correlations, writing the egg shortage has gone too far or simply writing human caviar. But I will say most netizens have had a normal sympathetic, albeit enraged response because it does feel like if this is true, we're all heading straight towards Handmaid's Tale. We're bypassing all security measures and just going straight to Margaret Atwood. And that's seems like it's becoming a reality. One netizen writes, I did IVF twice and yeah, the whole thing just on a physical level is really hard. Emotionally it was worse physically though hard. The medications you take during the stimming phase, which is stimulating the follicles to make your ovaries produce more eggs. It's got a range of side effects like constant severe headaches, mood changes, mood swings, including anger, depression, the physical discomfort toward the end before the retrieval. It's insane. I can't even imagine what these women went through. I was mentally and physically done after two cycles and I was willingly doing it. I was doing it so I could have kids. Being forced to repeat that monthly, it's torture. Other Comments Read this is so horrific. I have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that I'm not reading a dystopian fiction anymore. Another writes, the fertility industry is already deeply unethical in many ways, catering only almost exclusively to the wealthy while exploiting poor and marginalized women as surrogates and as egg donors. But this case is beyond even that level of quiet exploitation. This is out and out human trafficking, medical torture and slavery. To which someone theorizes, if they hadn't escaped, they would have ended up being harvested for their organs too, I expect. Or another theory, which is very dark to think about. Someone writes, with global birth rates dropping, this kind of thing will only grow. Or another one grimly writes, as a father to daughters, I guess I have to add this to my list of potential dangers my girls will face. For fuck's sake, this shit is getting long. Or another one says, wow, yet another thing a bear would never do to me. And one comment that I deeply resonate with the only good type of human traffickers are the dead ones. And that is today's Q case. What are your thoughts on this one? Let me know in the comments and stay safe. I will see you guys in the.

Narrator (61:18)

Next one our state has changed a lot in the last 140 years. We know because MultiCare has been here guided by a single purpose making our communities healthier. That comes from making courageous decisions, partnering with local communities to grow programs and services, and expanding healthcare access to those who need it most. Together, we're building a healthier future. Learn more@mycare.org.