Eggs for sale: The booming business of sharing your fertility

Victoria describes herself as "fun loving, generous and considerate". The 29-year-old blonde is "naturally slim with good bone structure", and an accomplished ballet dancer.

Danielle, 26, has wavy chestnut-coloured hair and blue eyes. A teacher by profession, she is "tall, athletic and outgoing", and also a part-time model.

These are not adverts on internet dating sites. Victoria and Danielle are just two of a rapidly growing number of young British women rushing to cash in on the latest way to make money: the egg donation business.

The sale of eggs is illegal in this country, but in America, the industry is worth an estimated $4.5bn (£2.4bn). Donors with the right physical, personal and intellectual attributes can attract fees of up to $35,000 for their eggs, with some in the industry claiming that as much as $50,000 has changed hands. Prices are rising, too: in New York, average eggs are fetching $8,000. About 15 years ago, the comparable figure was closer to $1,000.

Now British women - including 25-year-old Alexandra Saunders of High Wycombe, who this week advertised her eggs on the internet to pay off a £15,000 credit card debt - are following suit.

The biggest private donation agency in the US, eggdonor.com, has reported a 25 per cent increase in British applicants. Director Lyne Macklin-Fife says: "We've seen more and more applicants from the UK. Friends talk to friends and the word has spread. These people are kind and have a huge heart, but they also want to be compensated, which is fair."

Many leading American agencies do not accept foreign eggs, but are still inundated with emails from British women looking for a place to donate. Shelley Smith, director of the Egg Donor Program in Los Angeles, said emails from the UK were arriving at a rate of around 30 a month, a "huge increase" that began about four months ago. The majority, she says, ask about how much compensation they can get, and how the process works.

As other countries tighten laws around selling human tissue, America's loosely regulated market is becoming a world centre for egg donation. The US government reports a 40 per cent surge in the use of donor eggs, from 10,389 in 2000 to 14,323 in 2003, the last year for which figures are available.

Professor Debora Spar of Harvard Business School, a leading industry expert and author of the recent The Baby Business: How Money Science and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception, said the fertility industry was now "growing at a rapid clip". High success rates and growing compensatory sums have seen the market reach record highs, and it is showing no signs of abating.

"It just works in the US, and as the demand has gone up, so has the supply," said Professor Spar. "More and more eggs are available, and the market is working here. In the UK, you regulate from the outset, while in the US we are more comfortable to let the market run."

But this market - and the ease with which young British women can penetrate it - is causing concern for many on this side of the Atlantic. Josephine Quintavalle, of the UK pressure group Comment on Reproductive Ethics (Core), said all egg donation websites should provide health warnings.

"The industry is big business now, and it seems to be a free-for-all in America, but there are issues that women need to be aware of," said Ms Quintavalle. "It's not just handing an egg over - the egg turns into a baby. This is your genetic material you're giving to somebody. Would you hand your baby over to somebody else? Would you sell your child for £15,000? Of course not."

In this country, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) reports that each year, more than 1,000 British women volunteer to donate eggs for free. The organisation is keeping a careful eye on the situation in the US, and has already censured the auction website eBay for advertising eggs for sale in the UK.

"In Britain, we have a culture of altruistic donation," said John Paul Maytum, a spokesman for the HFEA. "There is always a concern when you start paying large amounts of money for eggs, because it will change people's motives for wanting to donate. If payment is attracting people desperate for money, it also raises questions about the quality of the eggs."

Controversially, one of the UK's leading fertility experts, Dr Mohammed Taranissi, has argued that payment for eggs was already a reality in the UK. Dr Taranissi, director of Britain's most successful fertility clinic, the Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre in London, said that, via sizeable "expenses" for donors and free IVF treatment for those involved in egg-sharing programmes, payment was being made in different ways by clinics.

"People are basically putting their heads in the sand, but what we already have here is payment in another form," said Dr Taranissi. "It may be in different terms, but it is already happening, and there is no cap on it."

Dr Taranissi added that the trend was only going to grow: "The whole egg donation thing is big business. Women are leaving it too late to have a baby and sometimes it's the only thing to do. Plus the success rate is very high. If done correctly, it is over 80 per cent."

One British egg donation company, Fertility 4 Life, has called for the HFEA to follow the example of its US counterparts.

The company's business director, Emma Peachment, said: "Egg donation is not a particularly nice thing to experience. For the treatments they have to go through, I think donors should get paid.

"Women are wanting babies later in life, and that is what's making this a business. The industry is certainly growing and looks like it will carry on doing so into the future."

We need to check your weight first

Eggdonor.com is one of a number of US websites advertising eggs for sale to infertile couples, including eggs from British women. Prices can reach up to $35,000 for donors with desirable physical characteristics, good medical histories and proven academic records. Prospective buyers are shown recent pictures of the donors, as well as images of them as babies and adolescents. They also analyse everything from their height and weight to details of their grandparents. Illegal in the UK, the US egg business is now worth an estimated $4.5bn.

Interesting? Click here to explore further