WEBVTT - The Human Egg Trade: Episode 1 - The Lie 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:07.200 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. 0:00:07.840 --> 0:00:11.560 Hi Wanha Here. This week we're airing the first episode 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:15.120 of a special series from Bloomberg's investigations team and The 0:00:15.120 --> 0:00:18.360 Big Take podcast. It's an in depth look at the 0:00:18.400 --> 0:00:22.640 global trade in human eggs. A batch of human eggs 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:25.680 is extracted from a woman somewhere on the planet roughly 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:29.480 every fifteen seconds, and as the demand for these eggs 0:00:29.520 --> 0:00:34.159 has grown, so has the potential for exploitation and even theft. 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:38.120 So to understand this market, Bloomberg reporters across the globe 0:00:38.200 --> 0:00:40.680 spent a year talking to people who are at the 0:00:40.680 --> 0:00:44.080 center of this booming industry that harvests from the bodies 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:48.240 of women and sometimes even girls. The three part series 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:51.000 was first published in The Big Take podcast in December, 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:54.120 and we'll be publishing the second and third episodes this week. 0:00:54.520 --> 0:00:56.960 Make sure to subscribe to The Big Take Asia to 0:00:57.000 --> 0:01:00.800 hear them when they're out. Here's our first episode. 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:05.640 This story starts with a young girl in India, barely 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:09.000 a teenager who loves doing hair and makeup and helping 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:12.120 her mom put on her sorry. When she grows up, 0:01:12.280 --> 0:01:16.040 she'd like to become a beautician, and in twenty twenty three. 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:19.000 She wanted what so many teens around the world want, 0:01:19.760 --> 0:01:26.280 a smartphone, and was a phone vihe Nakha. The girl 0:01:26.319 --> 0:01:29.880 says that like everyone in her generation, she loves using phones. 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:32.679 She'd asked her mom for one, but her mom said 0:01:32.840 --> 0:01:36.319 the family couldn't afford it. Then she heard about a 0:01:36.360 --> 0:01:39.520 way she could make the money herself. And because of 0:01:39.560 --> 0:01:42.720 what it involved and for reasons that will soon become clear, 0:01:43.360 --> 0:01:45.200 the girl and her family have asked that we not 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:49.520 use her name. The idea came from someone she trusted, 0:01:52.440 --> 0:02:03.560 zeik Mirda mohleki Chachi means aunt in Hindi. It's what 0:02:03.640 --> 0:02:07.360 the girl called her grandmother's neighbor. The woman's name is Sema. 0:02:07.760 --> 0:02:09.920 We're not using her last name because it could help 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:12.960 identify the girl. And Sema knew a way the girl 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:15.560 could get the money for a phone, but if she 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:18.880 went through with it, she wasn't allowed to tell her mom. 0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:24.120 The girl said that Sema didn't really explain what it was. 0:02:24.400 --> 0:02:26.160 She has said herself. 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:28.440 You know, I'm a kid like I didn't really understand 0:02:28.520 --> 0:02:30.200 what was being done to me or what was going 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:30.880 to happen to me. 0:02:31.400 --> 0:02:35.280 That's Natalie Obiko Pearson. She's an investigative reporter for Bloomberg 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:37.160 who was based in India for many years. 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:39.720 Sema just told her this is how you can make 0:02:39.760 --> 0:02:42.480 fifteen thousand rupees really quick, and so she was like, okay, 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:43.440 I'll go along with it. 0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:47.079 Fifteen thousand rupees is about one hundred and eighty US dollars. 0:02:47.280 --> 0:02:49.640 It might be more than what her mother makes in 0:02:49.680 --> 0:02:54.160 a month, so it's a lot of money in her world. 0:02:54.320 --> 0:02:57.000 But again, she had no idea what she was getting into. 0:02:57.240 --> 0:02:59.640 All she wanted was a phone and it ended up 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:03.680 having these consequences that she never could have imagined. 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:10.480 She'd agreed to sell her ex In doing so, she 0:03:10.639 --> 0:03:13.240 was pulled into a global industry that's boomed in the 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:16.359 last twenty years, especially within India. 0:03:16.560 --> 0:03:20.840 Fertility is a big business everywhere, but especially in India 0:03:20.880 --> 0:03:23.600 just because of the size of the market there and 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:27.480 global money has been pouring into that market. And there 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:29.480 are parts of India where you would walk along a 0:03:29.520 --> 0:03:32.400 single street and there would be like four or five 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:36.280 fertility clinics there that had cropped up within the span 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:40.040 of a few years. The analogy that everybody use is 0:03:40.080 --> 0:03:42.800 like they were like mushrooms. Once they began to grow. 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:45.200 They just began cropping up everywhere. 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:51.360 Today on the show The Human Egg Trade, a special 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:55.520 series from Bloomberg's investigations team, and the Big Take podcast. 0:03:56.120 --> 0:03:59.720 Well IVF or in vitro fertilization has been around since 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:03.920 the nineteen seventies. Early success rates were low, but over 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:08.680 the last two decades, advancements in technology and funding from 0:04:08.760 --> 0:04:12.080 the biggest investment banks and private equity firms have made 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:16.560 it possible for the fertility industry to flourish. Now, a 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:19.880 batch of human eggs is extracted from a woman somewhere 0:04:19.880 --> 0:04:24.280 on the planet roughly every fifteen seconds. Most are from 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:27.440 women who plan to use those eggs themselves, but at 0:04:27.520 --> 0:04:31.120 least six percent come from women who donate their eggs. 0:04:31.720 --> 0:04:36.320 That's the fertility industry's term donate, though in reality many 0:04:36.400 --> 0:04:40.680 of these women are paid. Bloomberg reporters across the globe 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:43.560 have spent the last year trying to understand this new 0:04:43.800 --> 0:04:48.040 booming market for human eggs. The stories they found shed 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:50.960 light on a supply chain where the prize commodity is 0:04:50.960 --> 0:04:55.359 harvested not from fields, fisheries, or mines, but from the 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:59.279 bodies of women and even girls. It's a global and 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:02.480 opaque mart where a demand is so great that even 0:05:02.520 --> 0:05:06.240 where regulations are in place, there are powerful incentives to 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:09.400 evade them. That's been the case in India, where our 0:05:09.440 --> 0:05:12.840 series starts, and where the story of One Girl shows 0:05:12.920 --> 0:05:15.200 how far some people will go to get a cut 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:18.880 of this trade, even if it means exploiting a child. 0:05:19.800 --> 0:05:28.279 Our story starts after the break. Bloomberg's Natalie Obiko Pearson 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:31.040 says there are a few reasons why India is seen 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:33.800 as the de facto capital of the fertility industry. 0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:37.000 One is because the sheer size of the population makes 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:40.239 the global IVF market there extremely large. 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:42.480 The other reason is cultural. 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:47.560 There's an incredible amount of pressure on women to give 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:49.680 birth in India, like as soon as you get married, 0:05:49.720 --> 0:05:51.480 the pressure begins of like when are you going to 0:05:51.520 --> 0:05:52.960 get pregnant? When are you going to bring us a 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:56.960 sun And that drives the egg donation market because couples 0:05:56.960 --> 0:05:59.479 there are often willing to maybe just try like one 0:05:59.520 --> 0:06:02.080 cycle off and then if they don't get pregnant, will 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:05.360 immediately opt for a donor egg. And it was such 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:09.120 a striking phenomenon that a couple IVF doctors actually said 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:11.080 it took them by surprise. At first, they would have 0:06:11.160 --> 0:06:13.560 thought that people would have opted to go for a 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:15.760 few more cycles, you know, wanting their children to have 0:06:15.800 --> 0:06:17.839 their own genetic makeup. But they were like, no, the 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:21.039 pressure and the expense was so much that they were like, 0:06:21.120 --> 0:06:22.640 let's just go to donation straightway. 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:25.920 In other words, a couple might bet that buying another 0:06:26.000 --> 0:06:28.440 woman's eggs could give them a quicker path to a 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:33.359 successful pregnancy. Natalie says fertility clinics in India serve a 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:36.600 wide range of customers, people from all parts of the country, 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:39.360 all around the world, and from all walks of life. 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:43.880 But she says the typical donor has a much narrower profile. 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:47.680 It's less privileged women coming from marginalized communities. I mean, 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:50.760 if you just think about the actual procedure of an 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:55.599 egg donation, it's an incredibly invasive procedure. It requires days 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:59.200 of hormones, you have to go under general anesthesia to 0:06:59.240 --> 0:07:02.240 have the eggs existed. So what person is going to 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:06.000 do that? Completely altruistically? Right, Like, the people who are 0:07:06.000 --> 0:07:08.239 doing it are usually doing it because they need money, 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:11.120 and so that means that most of the donors are 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:13.800 coming from poorer neighborhoods. 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:18.840 And more vulnerable backgrounds. In twenty twenty one, after sixteen years, 0:07:18.880 --> 0:07:23.280 eight drafts and three parliamentary studies, Indian lawmakers passed the 0:07:23.320 --> 0:07:28.160 country's first regulations regarding egg donations. The new law created 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:32.040 a national registry of fertility clinics. It also made it 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:35.320 illegal to sell eggs, though the industry still manages to 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:39.119 pay donors by compensating for related costs like their time 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:43.239 and travel, and it also made it illegal for anyone 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:45.560 under twenty three years old to donate. 0:07:45.960 --> 0:07:49.920 Anecdotally, you hear that egg donations dropped off quite a 0:07:49.920 --> 0:07:52.760 bit after the law came in, just because a lot 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:54.200 of people didn't want to be on the wrong side 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:57.560 of the law, and maybe it got more difficult source donors. 0:07:57.280 --> 0:08:01.360 At least to source those donors. Legally, the law was 0:08:01.360 --> 0:08:05.400 supposed to prevent egg donations from underage girls, but Natalie 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:08.840 says it's still fairly common. They're often brought in by 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:12.960 people like Sema, people known in the industry as agents. 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:17.120 They're not employed by any particular company or clinic. They're 0:08:17.160 --> 0:08:20.040 out there and they're in the neighborhoods trying to source 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:23.480 women to donate, or rather sell their eggs, and so 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:28.040 these are often former egg donors themselves, or they might 0:08:28.160 --> 0:08:31.280 be a cleaner at a hospital. It might be a 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:36.359 woman in the neighborhood who is also sourcing blood donations 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:40.360 and kidney donations and the like. And so word travels 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:43.920 along the grapevine and a lot of less privileged neighborhoods 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:46.240 that this is one way to make some fast cash 0:08:46.240 --> 0:08:46.920 if you need it. 0:08:47.360 --> 0:08:50.199 The girl's family comes from one of the lowest tiers 0:08:50.280 --> 0:08:54.360 in India's cast system. She says her father isn't around much, 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:58.199 her mother's parents help them get by, so the money 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:03.240 Seema offered the girl for her eggs was tempting. Once 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:07.640 she signed on, the plan unfolded over two weeks. It 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:10.320 started with shots. 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:12.840 So it was ten days of visiting the clinic and 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:16.920 going four hormones shots to stimulate her ovaries to produce 0:09:17.000 --> 0:09:19.840 the eggs. She was doing this all in secret from 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:22.920 her family, so she did talk about how she was 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:25.000 getting really sick of it at the end, and Sema 0:09:25.040 --> 0:09:27.120 was having to sort of cajole her and make sure 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:32.320 she attended her appointments. And you know, I've undergone IVF myself. 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:34.840 I know what those hormone shots are like and they 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:37.120 can really really mess with you. You end up feeling 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:41.559 incredibly bloated, Your emotions are all over the place. 0:09:41.800 --> 0:09:43.719 It can be painful at times. 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:46.120 To the extent that you know, did she have any 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:47.520 doubts during that process. 0:09:47.920 --> 0:09:49.960 I think there were moments where she was like, Oh, 0:09:50.000 --> 0:09:51.600 I'm done with this, this is like too much. 0:09:51.840 --> 0:09:54.800 But the girl told Natalie that by that point, Sema 0:09:54.880 --> 0:09:55.760 said it was too late. 0:09:56.080 --> 0:09:58.240 Sema was like, no, you can't back out. You're going 0:09:58.240 --> 0:10:00.719 to your appointments. You know, we're spending money on you 0:10:00.920 --> 0:10:03.120 to receive these medications, so you're going to go. 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:06.320 The girl was about thirteen years old, though her family 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:09.640 isn't sure of her exact birthday. That meant that what 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:13.079 she was preparing to do was illegal. So on the 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:16.360 morning of her retrieval, Sema helped the girl disguise her age. 0:10:16.960 --> 0:10:18.240 They started with her outfit. 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:20.800 Once her mother left the home, the girl got up 0:10:20.920 --> 0:10:23.480 and she had been told to wear a sari. So 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:26.679 the girl typically wears what we call some of archamza's 0:10:26.679 --> 0:10:29.600 in India. They're kind of like a tunic and it 0:10:29.760 --> 0:10:33.280 can make a slim body look very slim. The sari 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:36.920 was intended to make her look older, curvier like an adult. 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:40.800 The girl met Sima outside the clinic. Another woman was 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:44.480 with her, an agent named Anita. The girl told Natalie 0:10:44.520 --> 0:10:47.560 it was Anita who had arranged the fake id, and 0:10:47.600 --> 0:10:49.920 the girl says the two women had a few more 0:10:50.000 --> 0:10:52.720 tricks to make her look older before she went inside. 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:57.880 But the Awadani about the think. 0:10:58.040 --> 0:11:00.720 They began putting on all of these sort of accessories 0:11:00.720 --> 0:11:03.079 that signify a married woman in India, so like a 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:07.360 vermilion bindi on the forehead and a Mongol Sutra wedding necklace, 0:11:07.880 --> 0:11:11.360 and then they had a toddler ready for her. So 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:13.360 they had lied to the clinic and said that she 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:16.680 had already given birth twice, and so she was given 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:19.520 a fake child to take into the clinic with her. 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:23.040 Did the people in the clinic believe that she was 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:25.280 who she said she was and she was as old 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:26.120 as she said she. 0:11:26.160 --> 0:11:28.719 Was, Well, that's one of the things, right, I mean, 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:32.160 clearly some red flags did go up. The doctors who 0:11:32.200 --> 0:11:35.920 were counseling her before the procedure. At one point they 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:39.200 asked Sema to leave the room because they wanted to 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:42.040 hear from the girl herself. And then they were like, Okay, 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:44.520 why are you doing this? How many children have you had? 0:11:45.000 --> 0:11:47.800 The girl says she answered those questions the way Sema 0:11:47.840 --> 0:11:51.240 had coached her. If the doctors were skeptical, they didn't 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:54.800 stop the procedure from going forward. They wheeled the girl 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:58.199 into the operating room, put her under anesthesia, and started 0:11:58.200 --> 0:11:58.800 the retrieval. 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:03.839 They take a really really long needle and they push 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:07.880 it up your vagina and they go to the ovaries 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:11.840 where follicles have been developing. And so the follicles, probably 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:14.160 dozens of them in many cases, are about half an 0:12:14.160 --> 0:12:16.520 inch long, and they put the needle in there and 0:12:16.559 --> 0:12:18.520 they aspirate the egg out, so they sort of like 0:12:18.559 --> 0:12:20.080 suck it out, and they pull these out and they 0:12:20.120 --> 0:12:21.040 put them into a dish. 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:23.880 It's usually quite quick. It's over in about ten minutes. 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:27.680 The girl says she woke up from the procedure feeling woozy. 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:31.120 She was in pain, her stomach hurt, and she was 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:36.000 alone theater. 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:41.200 When she comes to she's like, nobody's there, the doctor's gone, 0:12:41.200 --> 0:12:42.040 nobody's talking to me. 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:46.839 Just make it. Man says thirty, yeah, Tombulnkan giant. 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:49.679 She sees a nurse She's like, can I go and 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:51.959 the nurse's like, yeah, sure, So she gets up and 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:55.240 leaves and she walks out of the clinic. Anita goes 0:12:55.280 --> 0:12:58.840 to an atm nearby, pulls out fifteen thousand rupees, hands 0:12:58.880 --> 0:13:01.560 it to Sema. Seema makes her cut, gives eleven thy 0:13:01.640 --> 0:13:04.280 six hundred rupees to the girl and goes immediately to 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:04.880 buy her phone. 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:08.040 After the girl bought her phone, she tried to hide 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:11.319 it from her mom, but her secret didn't stay secret 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:18.120 for long. Coming up how that secret was exposed and 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:20.520 how the girl's story connects to some of the biggest 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:37.719 financial players in the world, Bloomberg's Natalie Obico Pearson went 0:13:37.800 --> 0:13:40.280 to see the clinic where the girl's eggs were retrieved. 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:43.040 It's part of a chain which is one of the 0:13:43.080 --> 0:13:47.960 biggest in India. It's called Nova IVF Fertility. 0:13:49.480 --> 0:13:52.040 Walking up to the Nova IVF clinic. 0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:56.360 It's on a busy street in Varanasi, a city of 0:13:56.440 --> 0:13:58.760 a few million on the banks of the Ganges River 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:02.800 in northern India. From the outside, the clinic looks more 0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:04.160 office building than. 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:08.280 Hospital, big glass building with sort of blue reflective windows, 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:11.960 modern and there's like an eyeglasses shop on the bottom, 0:14:12.040 --> 0:14:15.720 which is selling designer sunglasses for more than the girl 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:16.920 got paid for eggs. 0:14:17.400 --> 0:14:20.760 The building is also covered with billboards. Our colleague at 0:14:20.800 --> 0:14:23.920 VET Pelipu helped Natalie translate them from Hindi. 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:26.800 West to become a mother and father. 0:14:28.400 --> 0:14:32.800 Stock your Jourdan, your mother and father road scot your journey. 0:14:32.560 --> 0:14:37.000 To become another product here. Nova IVF has had some 0:14:37.240 --> 0:14:38.400 big name investors. 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:43.720 Its growth was funded by Western financiers. You know, Goldman 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:46.240 Sachs was one of its very early investors. It was 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:50.320 set up by a US based private equity firm. Today 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:53.920 it's owned by TPG, another private equity firm. 0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:57.160 The rush to cash in on India's fertility industry has 0:14:57.280 --> 0:14:58.480 ramped up in recent years. 0:14:58.880 --> 0:15:02.120 I'd say in the last maybe like five to eight 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:04.600 years or so five to ten years. That's where you've 0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:07.640 seen sort of like the really big money, really sophisticated 0:15:07.680 --> 0:15:12.600 investors coming in, so Silicon Valley investors, private equity firms, 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:17.960 banks coming in and taking stakes in local IVF chains, 0:15:18.080 --> 0:15:18.960 expanding them. 0:15:19.360 --> 0:15:22.760 All of that business has created more competition among clinics 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:27.560 and also among agents, and that's actually how the girl's 0:15:27.600 --> 0:15:29.119 secret was exposed. 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:32.760 Seema and another agent end up getting into a quarrel 0:15:32.880 --> 0:15:35.440 on the street over the girl. The other agent is 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:38.920 accusing Sema of having stolen a client, and one of 0:15:39.000 --> 0:15:42.920 the girl's relatives overhears this quarrel, and so word goes 0:15:42.960 --> 0:15:45.640 back through her family, eventually back to her mom, and 0:15:45.720 --> 0:15:48.200 her mom confronts the girl and says, sees the phone 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:50.880 and that's when things sort of like explode. 0:15:51.760 --> 0:15:52.160 How cool. 0:15:55.880 --> 0:15:58.320 The girl's mother says that she was angry when she 0:15:58.400 --> 0:16:05.920 found out what her daughter had done sublo, but since 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:08.680 everyone was already starting to gossip, she didn't want to 0:16:08.720 --> 0:16:18.240 pile on. She says, what had been lost was lost, 0:16:19.280 --> 0:16:22.360 so as a mother, her job was to make sure 0:16:22.640 --> 0:16:23.840 something was done about it. 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:27.880 So the mom confronts Sema. She ends up filing a 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:29.360 police complaint. 0:16:30.080 --> 0:16:33.880 The girl's mother says even now she doesn't fully understand 0:16:34.000 --> 0:16:41.520 what was done to her daughter, and Natalie says her 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:44.640 confusion shows in that police complaint she filed. 0:16:47.480 --> 0:16:50.080 When her mother first went to the police and filed 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:53.200 the complaint, she wrote down something like, you know, something 0:16:53.280 --> 0:16:56.720 has happened to my daughter. She's still a virgin, like 0:16:56.920 --> 0:16:59.760 please help me, this is terrible and so it you know, 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:04.320 egg donations sort of get conflated with sex and maybe 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:07.119 sexual assault and the kind of implications that can have 0:17:07.359 --> 0:17:11.480 for a woman in Indian society. Violation a violation, and 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:15.639 it sparked the kind of questions that really are are 0:17:15.840 --> 0:17:18.920 are the worst question that an Indian woman can face, 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:21.159 is you know, is she going to be able to 0:17:21.240 --> 0:17:26.240 have children? So people don't understand this procedure, they're asking 0:17:26.359 --> 0:17:28.359 in the streets, their gossiping, is she ever going to 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:29.280 be able to have kids? 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:31.680 The complaint sparked an investigation. 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:35.040 The medical officers report was pretty explicit. 0:17:35.240 --> 0:17:39.040 It said this could not have happened without the cooperation 0:17:39.680 --> 0:17:43.199 of the clinic and its employees, and yet police never 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:46.960 seemed to follow that lead. They arrested the five low 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:51.600 level people and then never ended up going back to 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:54.560 the clinic and holding any of them accountable. 0:17:54.800 --> 0:17:57.679 Seema was among those arrested and has since been released 0:17:57.720 --> 0:18:01.040 on bail. Anita, the woman who helped secure the girl's 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:05.119 fake ID, was also arrested, along with three men. The 0:18:05.240 --> 0:18:08.560 doctors and staff at Nova IVF, the clinic that performed 0:18:08.600 --> 0:18:10.840 the retrieval, have not been named in the case. 0:18:11.200 --> 0:18:14.000 What Nova said to us, they said look like We 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:18.560 do our best to ensure that cases like this don't happen, 0:18:18.680 --> 0:18:21.000 but to some degree our hands are tied, like it's 0:18:21.119 --> 0:18:24.800 not our expertise to try and weed out fake IDs. 0:18:25.320 --> 0:18:27.600 This is where the government has to bring in biometric 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:31.000 verifications so that this kind of thing doesn't happen, and 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:33.040 we would be the first people to adopt it. 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:36.440 Goldman Sachs is no longer an investor in Nova IVF 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:40.359 and a client to comment. TPG, the private equity group 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:44.640 currently backing the clinic, deferred comment to Nova. Nova also 0:18:44.720 --> 0:18:47.560 said that they've been lobbying the Indian government to mandate 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:51.879 more stringent ways of verifying donors' identities and ages, but 0:18:52.000 --> 0:18:57.000 they say the government has not responded. After word got 0:18:57.080 --> 0:18:59.480 out in the girl's community that she had sold her 0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:03.439 eggs to buy a phone, the stigma she faced was severe. 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:13.600 Comment The girl says there are people who call her names, 0:19:13.920 --> 0:19:21.840 who scorn and taunt her. Government questions why people are 0:19:21.920 --> 0:19:28.840 only blaming her and not blaming the adults involved. Nation 0:19:33.600 --> 0:19:50.760 blamed it. Blame this is, she says. People keep talking 0:19:50.840 --> 0:19:53.360 about it, but no one asks her why she did 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:57.040 what she did. She says she knows she made a mistake. 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:02.439 Napos Gislio, are you. 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:04.280 He? 0:20:04.640 --> 0:20:05.960 Eliza Nicols? 0:20:06.400 --> 0:20:08.880 She had no idea what she was getting into. All 0:20:08.960 --> 0:20:11.560 she wanted was a phone and it ended up having 0:20:12.400 --> 0:20:15.159 these consequences that she never could have imagined. 0:20:15.359 --> 0:20:17.000 So she's dropped out of school. 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:20.440 You know, in stigma in close knit communities like the 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:22.840 ones that she lives in is something very difficult to 0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:23.600 escape from. 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:29.320 Natalie says, while the girl's story may seem extreme, it's 0:20:29.400 --> 0:20:32.639 not that unusual in India, one of the world's largest 0:20:32.720 --> 0:20:36.639 markets for donor eggs. But the same forces that swept 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:40.600 up the girl, great demand and great opportunity for profit 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:45.000 are not limited to India. They're present wherever the human 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:48.240 egg trade happens, and as the market has grown, so 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:51.400 has the potential for corruption and exploitation. 0:20:52.800 --> 0:20:58.040 To me, fundamentally, it's about the commodification of women's body 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:04.240 and the commercialization of production. So big investors are in 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:07.440 this for the money, and we know the kind of 0:21:07.720 --> 0:21:11.080 returns that private equity tends to expect. 0:21:10.720 --> 0:21:11.720 In their investments. 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:15.200 I think it's a story of what happens when you 0:21:15.320 --> 0:21:20.440 have tremendous growth and tremendous demand without guardrails. Just the 0:21:20.640 --> 0:21:25.080 infrastructure and the regulations and the ability to enforce is 0:21:25.200 --> 0:21:28.920 not there in India to make sure that procedures like 0:21:29.040 --> 0:21:33.720 this happen ethically. And I think that's something that I 0:21:33.960 --> 0:21:37.520 want people to think about when they come away from 0:21:37.560 --> 0:21:40.399 the story. If you're ever in the position where you 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:43.760 need a donated egg, to think about where is that 0:21:43.920 --> 0:21:46.200 coming from and how can you be sure that it 0:21:46.400 --> 0:21:47.600 was sourced sustainably. 0:21:52.760 --> 0:21:55.879 That was the first episode in The Human Egg Trade, 0:21:56.119 --> 0:21:59.200 our special series about the booming global market for human 0:21:59.280 --> 0:22:02.480 eggs and the people whose lives are swept up in it. 0:22:03.320 --> 0:22:05.840 The next episode in the series takes us to Greece, 0:22:06.480 --> 0:22:09.600 where this intense demand sets the stage for a crime 0:22:10.000 --> 0:22:11.720 with profound consequences. 0:22:12.880 --> 0:22:18.080 So Maria was lucky. She eventually did get pregnant and 0:22:18.119 --> 0:22:22.360 she had a child. And last year the police asked 0:22:22.400 --> 0:22:24.800 he had come down to the police station, and she 0:22:25.000 --> 0:22:28.359 walked into the room and there were two police officers 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:33.520 and a third person who was a psychologist. And when 0:22:33.640 --> 0:22:37.520 Maria saw the psychologist, her heart sunk. She knew she 0:22:37.640 --> 0:22:39.640 was about to get bad news. They sat her down 0:22:39.880 --> 0:22:43.600 and they broke the news to her that their investigation 0:22:44.320 --> 0:22:47.160 had found that her eggs had been stolen. 0:22:54.080 --> 0:22:56.920 For more in depth reporting on how the human egg 0:22:56.960 --> 0:23:00.760 has become a precious resource traded around the world, read 0:23:00.960 --> 0:23:04.480 The Egg, an investigation by Bloomberg BusinessWeek and The Big Take, 0:23:04.600 --> 0:23:08.360 which spans five continents and eleven countries. You can read 0:23:08.440 --> 0:23:11.800 The Egg on the Bloomberg terminal, Bloomberg dot Com or 0:23:11.880 --> 0:23:14.960 in the January twenty twenty five issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek. 0:23:15.640 --> 0:23:18.840 This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. 0:23:19.359 --> 0:23:22.480 This episode was produced by David Fox. It was edited 0:23:22.560 --> 0:23:26.520 by Tracy Samuelson, Lauren Etter, and Ken Armstrong. It was 0:23:26.600 --> 0:23:29.720 fact checked by Adriana Tapia and mixed and sound designed 0:23:29.800 --> 0:23:34.280 by Alex Sugia and Jessica Beck. Special thanks to Ed Vett, Pealipu, 0:23:34.560 --> 0:23:40.119 Vicki Fung Need Two, Suda mohandas Bloomberg Originals, and Pratish Narayanan. 0:23:40.640 --> 0:23:43.800 Our senior producer is Naomi shaven, Our senior editor is 0:23:43.840 --> 0:23:48.720 Elizabeth Ponso. Our executive producer is Nicole Beamsterrobor Sage Bauman 0:23:48.880 --> 0:23:52.160 is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. If you like this episode, 0:23:52.320 --> 0:23:54.920