1
00:00:03,080 --> 00:00:10,240
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. In early twenty twenty,

2
00:00:10,480 --> 00:00:14,000
Speaker 1: after a long struggle to get pregnant, Maria and her

3
00:00:14,080 --> 00:00:19,360
Speaker 1: husband started IVF, but Maria still considered herself lucky.

4
00:00:20,040 --> 00:00:23,680
Speaker 2: She lives on the island of Crete in the town

5
00:00:23,800 --> 00:00:28,200
Speaker 2: called Hanya, where, much to her good fortune, one of

6
00:00:28,240 --> 00:00:32,120
Speaker 2: the most prominent fertility clinics had been set up a

7
00:00:32,159 --> 00:00:33,280
Speaker 2: couple decades earlier.

8
00:00:33,720 --> 00:00:38,080
Speaker 1: That's Vernon Silver. He's an investigative reporter at Bloomberg, and

9
00:00:38,120 --> 00:00:40,920
Speaker 1: he traveled from his home base in Rome to Greece

10
00:00:41,360 --> 00:00:45,720
Speaker 1: to report this story. Maria is a pseudonym. She asked

11
00:00:45,760 --> 00:00:47,839
Speaker 1: us not to use her real name and didn't want

12
00:00:47,880 --> 00:00:51,200
Speaker 1: to be recorded. Her hometown of Hanya is a seaside

13
00:00:51,200 --> 00:00:55,280
Speaker 1: tourist destination with a close knit community famous for its

14
00:00:55,280 --> 00:00:58,800
Speaker 1: centuries old harbor. The clinic where Maria went is about

15
00:00:58,840 --> 00:01:01,120
Speaker 1: a ten minute walk from them. At harbor, it was

16
00:01:01,200 --> 00:01:05,760
Speaker 1: called the Mediterranean Fertility Institute, and it drew customers from

17
00:01:05,800 --> 00:01:06,639
Speaker 1: all over the world.

18
00:01:06,959 --> 00:01:10,720
Speaker 2: In recent years, it had become a hub for customers

19
00:01:10,800 --> 00:01:14,720
Speaker 2: from Italy, or Australia or the US. So right there

20
00:01:14,720 --> 00:01:18,560
Speaker 2: in her backyard was a clinic that could provide exactly

21
00:01:18,600 --> 00:01:21,640
Speaker 2: what she and her husband needed to try to have

22
00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:22,600
Speaker 2: this baby.

23
00:01:22,800 --> 00:01:26,319
Speaker 1: It all seemed pretty standard. The clinic did a procedure

24
00:01:26,440 --> 00:01:30,560
Speaker 1: to retrieve Maria's eggs. Staff fertilized them with her husband's

25
00:01:30,560 --> 00:01:34,839
Speaker 1: sperm and implanted an embryo. She told Vernon it took

26
00:01:34,959 --> 00:01:39,560
Speaker 1: three cycles of IVF, but finally it worked.

27
00:01:39,720 --> 00:01:42,080
Speaker 2: She eventually did get pregnant and she had a child.

28
00:01:42,520 --> 00:01:44,440
Speaker 2: Her dream had come true.

29
00:01:44,800 --> 00:01:47,720
Speaker 1: Maria became a mother and for the next three years

30
00:01:47,840 --> 00:01:51,040
Speaker 1: she raised her baby, who grew into a toddler. Then,

31
00:01:51,080 --> 00:01:54,760
Speaker 1: one day in February twenty twenty four, she got a

32
00:01:54,800 --> 00:01:55,840
Speaker 1: call from the police.

33
00:01:56,560 --> 00:01:58,480
Speaker 2: The police asker had come down to the police station

34
00:01:59,000 --> 00:02:02,280
Speaker 2: and she walked into the room and there were two

35
00:02:02,320 --> 00:02:06,640
Speaker 2: police officers and a third person who was a psychologist.

36
00:02:09,240 --> 00:02:14,639
Speaker 2: And when Maria saw the psychologist, her heart sunk. She knew,

37
00:02:15,160 --> 00:02:20,079
Speaker 2: she knew she was about to get bad news. They

38
00:02:20,120 --> 00:02:22,160
Speaker 2: sat her down, The four of them sat around a desk,

39
00:02:22,480 --> 00:02:26,240
Speaker 2: and they broke the news to her that their investigation

40
00:02:26,919 --> 00:02:29,760
Speaker 2: had found that her eggs had been stolen.

41
00:02:30,520 --> 00:02:34,560
Speaker 1: Stolen. She didn't donate them or sell them. She initially

42
00:02:34,639 --> 00:02:36,600
Speaker 1: didn't even know they'd been taken from her.

43
00:02:37,040 --> 00:02:39,639
Speaker 2: When she had had her eggs harvested to make her

44
00:02:39,639 --> 00:02:43,400
Speaker 2: own child. People at this clinic, according to the police,

45
00:02:43,480 --> 00:02:47,000
Speaker 2: had secretly taken about half of those eggs and given

46
00:02:47,040 --> 00:02:48,160
Speaker 2: them to another woman.

47
00:02:57,680 --> 00:03:01,120
Speaker 1: This is episode two of The Huge Human Egg Trade,

48
00:03:01,240 --> 00:03:04,440
Speaker 1: a special series from Bloomberg's investigations team and the Big

49
00:03:04,480 --> 00:03:08,560
Speaker 1: Take podcast about the booming global market for human eggs.

50
00:03:09,280 --> 00:03:13,360
Speaker 1: Bloomberg reporters across five continents and eleven countries have spent

51
00:03:13,440 --> 00:03:17,280
Speaker 1: the last year trying to understand how human eggs are

52
00:03:17,320 --> 00:03:21,000
Speaker 1: bought and sold around the world. They've shed light on

53
00:03:21,040 --> 00:03:25,040
Speaker 1: the thirty five billion dollar market for assisted reproduction, an

54
00:03:25,080 --> 00:03:29,400
Speaker 1: opaque market where regulations vary widely from country to country.

55
00:03:29,639 --> 00:03:32,320
Speaker 1: It's a patchwork that can push some people to travel

56
00:03:32,400 --> 00:03:35,640
Speaker 1: great distances in their quest for a child, and can

57
00:03:35,680 --> 00:03:39,640
Speaker 1: also create opportunities for bad actors looking for a cut

58
00:03:39,640 --> 00:03:43,600
Speaker 1: of the trade. Today, we zoom in on one clinic

59
00:03:43,680 --> 00:03:47,080
Speaker 1: in Greece where police have identified as many as seventy

60
00:03:47,160 --> 00:03:51,360
Speaker 1: five cases of egg theft. Seventy five cases where a

61
00:03:51,360 --> 00:03:55,360
Speaker 1: woman's eggs were allegedly taken without her consent and sold

62
00:03:55,760 --> 00:04:00,000
Speaker 1: or donated to another person. It's a story that shows

63
00:04:00,240 --> 00:04:03,000
Speaker 1: how the actions of one clinic can have ripple effects

64
00:04:03,040 --> 00:04:06,800
Speaker 1: around the world that can reverberate for decades, and it

65
00:04:06,840 --> 00:04:10,200
Speaker 1: reveals the unique ways that the fertility industry runs not

66
00:04:10,320 --> 00:04:15,480
Speaker 1: only on capital, but on trust. Will continue after the

67
00:04:15,520 --> 00:04:29,960
Speaker 1: break after a year of digging into the fertility industry,

68
00:04:30,080 --> 00:04:33,799
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's Vernon Silver says, the trade of human eggs behaves

69
00:04:33,920 --> 00:04:36,480
Speaker 1: much like the trade of any commodity.

70
00:04:36,360 --> 00:04:41,240
Speaker 2: Like any global commodity trade, where you ship things, where

71
00:04:41,279 --> 00:04:45,080
Speaker 2: you invest, where you go for the best deal, depends

72
00:04:45,120 --> 00:04:48,400
Speaker 2: on regulations and prices, and it's kind of like squeezing

73
00:04:48,440 --> 00:04:51,120
Speaker 2: a water balloon, where if there's pressure at one place,

74
00:04:51,279 --> 00:04:53,000
Speaker 2: you know everybody's going to go somewhere else.

75
00:04:53,200 --> 00:04:57,080
Speaker 1: In recent years, as other fertility hotspots like India and

76
00:04:57,160 --> 00:05:01,240
Speaker 1: Thailand tighten their regulations, and after Russia began its full

77
00:05:01,279 --> 00:05:05,359
Speaker 1: scale invasion of Ukraine, Vernon says, some of that trade

78
00:05:05,560 --> 00:05:10,719
Speaker 1: shifted to Greece. If you're a couple or a person

79
00:05:11,600 --> 00:05:16,040
Speaker 1: needing a fertility treatment, what is the pitch that Greece

80
00:05:16,279 --> 00:05:16,920
Speaker 1: gives to them.

81
00:05:17,160 --> 00:05:20,920
Speaker 2: Greece has positioned itself, along with other countries that have

82
00:05:21,040 --> 00:05:25,760
Speaker 2: nice beaches, as a location for medical tourism, which applies

83
00:05:25,920 --> 00:05:31,039
Speaker 2: to fertility treatments. When it comes to eggs and the

84
00:05:31,240 --> 00:05:36,440
Speaker 2: other services like surrogacy an IVF its prices are lower

85
00:05:37,000 --> 00:05:41,720
Speaker 2: than in the United States, for example. In other Western countries.

86
00:05:41,920 --> 00:05:44,600
Speaker 1: The country's legal framework is another selling point.

87
00:05:44,839 --> 00:05:47,279
Speaker 2: There are a lot of restrictions in a lot of

88
00:05:47,320 --> 00:05:51,039
Speaker 2: countries that make it harder to do IVF or to

89
00:05:51,480 --> 00:05:55,280
Speaker 2: get a donor egg in a country like Italy, for example,

90
00:05:55,440 --> 00:05:59,599
Speaker 2: or Australia, and those restrictions are much less in Greece.

91
00:06:00,120 --> 00:06:05,400
Speaker 2: Combination of legal framework, money access and you know, a

92
00:06:05,440 --> 00:06:10,200
Speaker 2: friendly accepting economy based really from the government that wants

93
00:06:10,279 --> 00:06:11,920
Speaker 2: to promote this sort of thing.

94
00:06:12,000 --> 00:06:14,120
Speaker 1: And nice beaches and nice.

95
00:06:13,880 --> 00:06:16,080
Speaker 2: Beaches, I mean. Part of what happens when you are

96
00:06:16,160 --> 00:06:18,960
Speaker 2: seeking a fertility treatment, especially if it involves you know,

97
00:06:19,000 --> 00:06:22,479
Speaker 2: a donor egg, is somebody will travel, let's say, with

98
00:06:22,560 --> 00:06:26,240
Speaker 2: her husband to Greece, go to the clinic. The husband

99
00:06:26,320 --> 00:06:28,640
Speaker 2: will provide a sperm sample that will be used to

100
00:06:28,640 --> 00:06:32,200
Speaker 2: fertilize the donor egg. They wait around on the beach

101
00:06:32,279 --> 00:06:35,200
Speaker 2: in a nice hotel, have a good meal while the

102
00:06:35,880 --> 00:06:41,240
Speaker 2: wife is being prepared to have this growing embryo implanted

103
00:06:41,240 --> 00:06:43,800
Speaker 2: in her. And so it's always good to have a

104
00:06:43,880 --> 00:06:46,440
Speaker 2: nice place to do this that's pleasant and hang out

105
00:06:46,520 --> 00:06:47,719
Speaker 2: and cost effective.

106
00:06:48,120 --> 00:06:53,640
Speaker 1: Vernon says Greece's fertility industry has another geographic advantage proximity

107
00:06:53,680 --> 00:06:55,160
Speaker 1: to Eastern Europe.

108
00:06:55,320 --> 00:06:59,760
Speaker 2: Borders on poorer Eastern European countries, where there are women

109
00:07:00,000 --> 00:07:03,320
Speaker 2: who might want to be paid for their eggs and

110
00:07:03,360 --> 00:07:06,240
Speaker 2: also to be surrogates, which is a related industry in

111
00:07:06,240 --> 00:07:07,360
Speaker 2: the fertility industry.

112
00:07:07,600 --> 00:07:11,200
Speaker 1: Women from countries like Georgia and Bulgaria, who Vernon says,

113
00:07:11,280 --> 00:07:14,000
Speaker 1: are often motivated to sell their eggs because it pays

114
00:07:14,040 --> 00:07:17,440
Speaker 1: more than many other kinds of work, but that dynamic

115
00:07:17,600 --> 00:07:19,760
Speaker 1: has created opportunities for abuse.

116
00:07:20,320 --> 00:07:23,120
Speaker 2: Going back a decade, there had been a series of

117
00:07:23,800 --> 00:07:27,680
Speaker 2: busts by the Greek authorities, mostly in the northern city

118
00:07:27,720 --> 00:07:31,800
Speaker 2: of Thessaloniki, where they had tried to crack down on

119
00:07:32,760 --> 00:07:37,800
Speaker 2: people being pressured or manipulated or trafficked into giving up

120
00:07:37,840 --> 00:07:41,240
Speaker 2: their eggs. And so while Greece is not the biggest

121
00:07:41,360 --> 00:07:45,440
Speaker 2: market for eggs, you have Ukraine, you have Spain, which

122
00:07:45,440 --> 00:07:48,280
Speaker 2: are sort of massive hubs for egg banks, and that

123
00:07:48,320 --> 00:07:51,000
Speaker 2: sort of thing. You had some of the worst behavior

124
00:07:51,080 --> 00:07:53,200
Speaker 2: already being exposed in Greece.

125
00:07:53,480 --> 00:07:58,000
Speaker 1: The clinic where Maria went the Mediterranean Fertility institute had

126
00:07:58,040 --> 00:08:01,360
Speaker 1: been on the radar of Greek regulators for years. In

127
00:08:01,400 --> 00:08:06,200
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, the Greek agency overseeing medically assisted reproduction sent

128
00:08:06,240 --> 00:08:08,720
Speaker 1: a team of inspectors to the clinic to look into

129
00:08:08,720 --> 00:08:12,960
Speaker 1: a complaint about its surrogacy program. The team ultimately voted

130
00:08:13,000 --> 00:08:16,680
Speaker 1: to suspend the clinic's license for improper record keeping, but

131
00:08:16,720 --> 00:08:20,960
Speaker 1: the suspension went unenforced and the clinic remained open. It

132
00:08:21,000 --> 00:08:24,920
Speaker 1: would take another four years before Greek authorities were once

133
00:08:24,960 --> 00:08:26,320
Speaker 1: again at its door.

134
00:08:26,840 --> 00:08:30,760
Speaker 2: A few months before the police invited Mario over to

135
00:08:30,800 --> 00:08:33,520
Speaker 2: break her the bad news about her own eggs. There

136
00:08:33,520 --> 00:08:36,440
Speaker 2: had been a bust and this had to do with

137
00:08:36,960 --> 00:08:41,080
Speaker 2: surrogacy and other issues, not egg theft yet, and because

138
00:08:41,120 --> 00:08:43,200
Speaker 2: of that bust, the clinic shutdown.

139
00:08:43,559 --> 00:08:46,640
Speaker 1: The police told Vernon they were once again looking into

140
00:08:46,679 --> 00:08:50,720
Speaker 1: the clinic surrogacy practices, but once they got inside, they

141
00:08:50,760 --> 00:08:52,959
Speaker 1: found evidence of other kinds of crime.

142
00:08:53,200 --> 00:08:56,080
Speaker 2: What the police had found in their investigation of this

143
00:08:56,160 --> 00:08:59,640
Speaker 2: clinic was that there were these handwritten records that showed

144
00:08:59,679 --> 00:09:03,720
Speaker 2: on a certain day, an IVF patient like Maria would

145
00:09:03,720 --> 00:09:06,000
Speaker 2: have her eggs removed and they would say how many

146
00:09:06,040 --> 00:09:08,880
Speaker 2: there were, and on that same day, about half that

147
00:09:09,000 --> 00:09:12,720
Speaker 2: many showed up in these handwritten records as being donations

148
00:09:13,120 --> 00:09:16,559
Speaker 2: to another woman of fresh eggs, meaning non frozen eggs,

149
00:09:16,559 --> 00:09:19,120
Speaker 2: eggs that had been extracted that day, and if that

150
00:09:19,240 --> 00:09:22,000
Speaker 2: woman had been the only person who had come in

151
00:09:22,200 --> 00:09:26,400
Speaker 2: to get her eggs removed, the police were fairly confident

152
00:09:26,440 --> 00:09:30,040
Speaker 2: that they could conclude that that exact match. For example,

153
00:09:30,440 --> 00:09:34,200
Speaker 2: twelve eggs removed from patient A and then six given

154
00:09:34,400 --> 00:09:38,480
Speaker 2: as a donation to patient B, and six made use

155
00:09:38,520 --> 00:09:41,120
Speaker 2: of by patient A the original one. That all added

156
00:09:41,200 --> 00:09:44,120
Speaker 2: up to them literally siphoning off half of the eggs

157
00:09:44,240 --> 00:09:45,040
Speaker 2: for somebody else.

158
00:09:45,520 --> 00:09:48,000
Speaker 1: The police also found that the clinic had a consent

159
00:09:48,080 --> 00:09:50,280
Speaker 1: for him with a box that patients could check if

160
00:09:50,320 --> 00:09:52,920
Speaker 1: they were willing to donate some of their unused embryos

161
00:09:53,160 --> 00:09:57,000
Speaker 1: eggs that were successfully fertilized. And when the police sat

162
00:09:57,040 --> 00:09:59,840
Speaker 1: down with Maria, they really wanted to ask her about

163
00:09:59,840 --> 00:10:01,400
Speaker 1: that piece of paperwork.

164
00:10:02,120 --> 00:10:05,240
Speaker 2: What they wanted to know from Maria was had she

165
00:10:05,360 --> 00:10:07,760
Speaker 2: consented to this quote.

166
00:10:07,440 --> 00:10:09,719
Speaker 1: Donation and had she She.

167
00:10:09,720 --> 00:10:12,920
Speaker 2: Said she definitely did not. In fact, she remembered the

168
00:10:13,400 --> 00:10:15,760
Speaker 2: consent form that she signed, and she said, you know,

169
00:10:15,840 --> 00:10:19,920
Speaker 2: this consent form had a box to tick about donating

170
00:10:20,000 --> 00:10:24,760
Speaker 2: any unused embryos which she did not tick, and nothing

171
00:10:24,800 --> 00:10:29,440
Speaker 2: about donating any excess eggs, and so at that point,

172
00:10:30,080 --> 00:10:32,200
Speaker 2: as it would turn out that she was one of

173
00:10:32,360 --> 00:10:36,680
Speaker 2: scores of women who were getting similar calls with the

174
00:10:36,720 --> 00:10:38,839
Speaker 2: police telling them the same thing and wanting to know

175
00:10:39,400 --> 00:10:42,000
Speaker 2: the same basic question, did you consent to this? Because

176
00:10:42,000 --> 00:10:44,559
Speaker 2: the records we have found showed that half of your

177
00:10:44,559 --> 00:10:46,040
Speaker 2: eggs went to somebody else.

178
00:10:48,080 --> 00:10:51,080
Speaker 1: If you're a woman in Maria's position, leaving the clinic

179
00:10:51,120 --> 00:10:55,000
Speaker 1: that day and the police never call you, how would

180
00:10:55,000 --> 00:10:58,120
Speaker 1: you ever know that your eggs had been stolen?

181
00:10:58,600 --> 00:11:02,800
Speaker 2: You would never know. Possibly you could know later on,

182
00:11:02,880 --> 00:11:05,440
Speaker 2: you know, if somebody did a twenty three and me test,

183
00:11:06,280 --> 00:11:07,920
Speaker 2: or if you walk down the street and saw someone

184
00:11:07,920 --> 00:11:10,040
Speaker 2: who looked a lot like your own kid. I mean,

185
00:11:10,080 --> 00:11:14,280
Speaker 2: there are ways conceivably to find out.

186
00:11:14,720 --> 00:11:18,280
Speaker 1: A DNA test, a gut feeling, but in the moment,

187
00:11:18,600 --> 00:11:22,560
Speaker 1: it's impossible to know. That's because a woman undergoing an

188
00:11:22,559 --> 00:11:26,720
Speaker 1: egg retrievrole is typically given anesthesia. It's only after she

189
00:11:26,840 --> 00:11:30,600
Speaker 1: comes to that she's told exactly how many eggs were collected.

190
00:11:30,920 --> 00:11:35,040
Speaker 2: But the really haunting aspect of all of this is

191
00:11:35,080 --> 00:11:38,439
Speaker 2: that if the police hadn't been doing an investigation of

192
00:11:38,520 --> 00:11:40,960
Speaker 2: this clinic, which they were doing for other reasons. If

193
00:11:40,960 --> 00:11:44,960
Speaker 2: that hadn't happened, she likely would never have been called

194
00:11:45,000 --> 00:11:47,839
Speaker 2: to the police station and been told this information, and she.

195
00:11:47,880 --> 00:11:51,040
Speaker 1: Might never know when we come back, what happened to

196
00:11:51,080 --> 00:11:54,600
Speaker 1: the eggs and embryos stored at the Mediterranean Fertility Institute

197
00:11:54,640 --> 00:11:57,360
Speaker 1: when it suddenly shut down, and what the fallout of

198
00:11:57,400 --> 00:12:00,840
Speaker 1: the investigation has meant for the women whose eggs were stolen.

199
00:12:11,559 --> 00:12:14,760
Speaker 1: Earlier this year, Bloomberg's Vernon Silver went to visit a

200
00:12:14,760 --> 00:12:18,679
Speaker 1: secure room at Khanya General Hospital on the Greek island

201
00:12:18,760 --> 00:12:22,240
Speaker 1: of Crete. He was there to see the genetic material

202
00:12:22,400 --> 00:12:27,040
Speaker 1: that authorities had seized from the Mediterranean Fertility Institute without sansos.

203
00:12:28,440 --> 00:12:30,040
Speaker 3: Is it top secret? Can I take a picture?

204
00:12:30,080 --> 00:12:30,200
Speaker 4: Yes?

205
00:12:30,280 --> 00:12:30,439
Speaker 2: Yes.

206
00:12:30,840 --> 00:12:34,040
Speaker 1: A doctor punched a passcode into a keypad and unlocked

207
00:12:34,040 --> 00:12:36,079
Speaker 1: the door to the climate controlled room.

208
00:12:36,320 --> 00:12:39,400
Speaker 3: It's nice and cold, nice and colored, of course.

209
00:12:39,960 --> 00:12:43,760
Speaker 1: Inside, they showed Vernon the six rounded metal containers that

210
00:12:43,800 --> 00:12:45,280
Speaker 1: were lined up against a wall.

211
00:12:45,360 --> 00:12:48,120
Speaker 2: It looks like R two D two from Star Wars.

212
00:12:50,160 --> 00:12:53,199
Speaker 1: The canisters looked like a cross between an ancient Greek

213
00:12:53,240 --> 00:12:57,800
Speaker 1: amphora and a propane tank. Rounded metal containers with wheels

214
00:12:57,800 --> 00:13:01,520
Speaker 1: on the bottom and two handles on top. The lids

215
00:13:01,559 --> 00:13:06,440
Speaker 1: were fitted with handwritten labels and temperature monitors in these.

216
00:13:06,240 --> 00:13:15,000
Speaker 3: Things here they so this is an expensive operation because

217
00:13:15,000 --> 00:13:18,440
Speaker 3: you also have this thing that goes down. What is that?

218
00:13:18,440 --> 00:13:19,000
Speaker 3: That's the ice.

219
00:13:19,280 --> 00:13:22,840
Speaker 1: The canisters were filled with liquid nitrogen and between the

220
00:13:22,880 --> 00:13:25,800
Speaker 1: six of them all the genetic material that had been

221
00:13:25,840 --> 00:13:30,840
Speaker 1: seized from the Mediterranean Fertility Institute. In total, they contained

222
00:13:30,880 --> 00:13:35,160
Speaker 1: the eggs, embryos, and sperm of about nine hundred people.

223
00:13:36,440 --> 00:13:39,640
Speaker 1: But Vernon says the canisters represent only part of the

224
00:13:39,720 --> 00:13:42,319
Speaker 1: chaos that ensued from the clinic's closure.

225
00:13:42,559 --> 00:13:45,600
Speaker 2: Really heartbreaking chaos, because this is a clinic that had

226
00:13:45,640 --> 00:13:51,360
Speaker 2: stored embryos and eggs and hired surrogates to carry people's

227
00:13:51,520 --> 00:13:56,160
Speaker 2: babies for them. So they were dealing with everything from

228
00:13:56,640 --> 00:14:01,880
Speaker 2: frozen eggs and embryos, to pregnant women to babies who

229
00:14:01,960 --> 00:14:04,640
Speaker 2: had to literally be sorted out with DNA test.

230
00:14:07,520 --> 00:14:11,040
Speaker 1: In the early morning hours of August eighth, twenty twenty three,

231
00:14:11,280 --> 00:14:15,760
Speaker 1: when police descended on the Mediterranean Fertility Institute, the clinic

232
00:14:15,840 --> 00:14:19,120
Speaker 1: was working with a number of pregnant surrogates, and after

233
00:14:19,280 --> 00:14:22,760
Speaker 1: it was abruptly shut down. The Kanya General Hospital took

234
00:14:22,800 --> 00:14:26,320
Speaker 1: over their care and the care of the seventeen babies

235
00:14:26,400 --> 00:14:29,560
Speaker 1: they gave birth to. It would take eight months and

236
00:14:29,720 --> 00:14:33,840
Speaker 1: DNA testing to match them to their families and determine custody.

237
00:14:34,600 --> 00:14:37,880
Speaker 1: Vernon says what to do with the genetic material inside

238
00:14:37,920 --> 00:14:41,560
Speaker 1: the canisters was another piece of the puzzle. Some of

239
00:14:41,600 --> 00:14:45,240
Speaker 1: it came from local clients like Maria, some of it

240
00:14:45,320 --> 00:14:48,640
Speaker 1: had come from Ukrainian cryobanks, whose staff sent it out

241
00:14:48,640 --> 00:14:52,680
Speaker 1: of the country for safe keeping after Russia invaded, and

242
00:14:52,760 --> 00:14:56,120
Speaker 1: some of it had come from the clinic's foreign clients.

243
00:14:56,720 --> 00:14:59,800
Speaker 1: The embryologists charged with caring for them told Vernon the

244
00:14:59,840 --> 00:15:03,240
Speaker 1: ca canisters contained frozen eggs and embryos from about one

245
00:15:03,320 --> 00:15:06,360
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five people who had come from outside Greece.

246
00:15:07,640 --> 00:15:10,000
Speaker 1: Some of those people had traveled from as far away

247
00:15:10,000 --> 00:15:14,040
Speaker 1: as India and Australia to use the clinic services, and

248
00:15:14,200 --> 00:15:17,600
Speaker 1: some were clients of Sam Everingham.

249
00:15:17,920 --> 00:15:21,760
Speaker 4: So parents were contacting me saying, look way here for

250
00:15:21,800 --> 00:15:24,280
Speaker 4: the birth of that child, but no one's here. The

251
00:15:24,320 --> 00:15:29,760
Speaker 4: staff of all gone. They're in gile wirestock.

252
00:15:30,280 --> 00:15:34,280
Speaker 1: Sam is the founder of Growing Families Global. Its mission

253
00:15:34,480 --> 00:15:38,120
Speaker 1: is to support and inform people looking for safe, ethical

254
00:15:38,200 --> 00:15:42,080
Speaker 1: fertility services. He says people often reach out to his

255
00:15:42,200 --> 00:15:45,360
Speaker 1: organization when they can't source surrogates or donors in their

256
00:15:45,400 --> 00:15:50,240
Speaker 1: own countries and are hoping to find information about options overseas.

257
00:15:51,480 --> 00:15:55,680
Speaker 1: Representatives from the Mediterranean Fertility Institute had spoken at events

258
00:15:55,680 --> 00:15:59,520
Speaker 1: his organization hosted in Australia. He'd even gone to visit

259
00:15:59,520 --> 00:16:03,600
Speaker 1: the facility himself, and he says he was shocked when

260
00:16:03,600 --> 00:16:05,440
Speaker 1: he heard what had gone wrong there.

261
00:16:05,880 --> 00:16:10,280
Speaker 4: Oh, it was horrifying. Yeah, it was really tough. We

262
00:16:10,360 --> 00:16:12,520
Speaker 4: had to get them in touch with the Greek lawyers

263
00:16:13,560 --> 00:16:15,880
Speaker 4: to help out there. Some of them wanted to take

264
00:16:15,920 --> 00:16:18,520
Speaker 4: cases against the clinic, many of them wanted to get

265
00:16:18,520 --> 00:16:21,120
Speaker 4: embryos out. We had to do a lot of work

266
00:16:21,160 --> 00:16:24,400
Speaker 4: to try and get embryo shipping happening to other countries,

267
00:16:24,440 --> 00:16:26,640
Speaker 4: and that was complicated because of the rules in Greece

268
00:16:26,720 --> 00:16:31,200
Speaker 4: around embryo export. So it ended up being a really

269
00:16:31,240 --> 00:16:36,840
Speaker 4: difficult lesson for people around the risks of cross border

270
00:16:36,880 --> 00:16:39,600
Speaker 4: reproductive care. You can't be on the ground looking at

271
00:16:39,600 --> 00:16:42,160
Speaker 4: what these planks are doing, and they'd pulled the wall

272
00:16:42,200 --> 00:16:43,640
Speaker 4: over the eyes of so many people.

273
00:16:44,160 --> 00:16:47,680
Speaker 1: Seeing the fallout from the closure of the Mediterranean Fertility

274
00:16:47,720 --> 00:16:51,720
Speaker 1: Institute made Sam re examine his own experience with the

275
00:16:51,760 --> 00:16:52,760
Speaker 1: fertility industry.

276
00:16:53,600 --> 00:16:56,760
Speaker 4: I suddenly started questioning the kind of things that were

277
00:16:56,760 --> 00:16:59,160
Speaker 4: happening in India, and we'd done it all those years before.

278
00:17:00,120 --> 00:17:04,520
Speaker 4: I did organize some DNA testing for our daughters because

279
00:17:04,840 --> 00:17:07,639
Speaker 4: there are they look different.

280
00:17:08,320 --> 00:17:11,560
Speaker 1: Sam and his husband have teenage twin daughters born through

281
00:17:11,560 --> 00:17:14,840
Speaker 1: a surrogate in India. They'd been told the girls were

282
00:17:14,880 --> 00:17:18,720
Speaker 1: born from eggs from the same woman, but doubts had lingered.

283
00:17:19,400 --> 00:17:22,280
Speaker 4: And yeah, so look we've got the DNA test done

284
00:17:22,280 --> 00:17:24,440
Speaker 4: it and sure enough we've been told they were the

285
00:17:24,560 --> 00:17:28,000
Speaker 4: same egdona, but the results so that they weren't. And look,

286
00:17:28,320 --> 00:17:30,159
Speaker 4: you know, it doesn't matter for us in terms of,

287
00:17:30,200 --> 00:17:32,280
Speaker 4: you know, loving our kids, but it's kind of weird

288
00:17:32,320 --> 00:17:35,080
Speaker 4: when a click tells you they've used one egdona and

289
00:17:35,400 --> 00:17:37,280
Speaker 4: you find out, well, no, they hadn't.

290
00:17:37,720 --> 00:17:41,080
Speaker 1: Once Sam and his family had the results, they discovered

291
00:17:41,240 --> 00:17:42,320
Speaker 1: they weren't alone.

292
00:17:42,560 --> 00:17:45,200
Speaker 4: We suddenly started realizing we're talking to other parents who'd

293
00:17:45,240 --> 00:17:46,920
Speaker 4: done the same kind of tests and found the same

294
00:17:46,920 --> 00:17:49,199
Speaker 4: sort of thing, but the kids they'd had in the

295
00:17:49,240 --> 00:17:52,400
Speaker 4: same country were also different.

296
00:17:52,119 --> 00:17:56,359
Speaker 1: Genetically and Obviously, as you said, this doesn't change anything

297
00:17:56,400 --> 00:17:59,800
Speaker 1: about how you love your children. But what did it

298
00:18:00,119 --> 00:18:03,600
Speaker 1: feel like having that revelation and that surprise.

299
00:18:04,440 --> 00:18:06,480
Speaker 4: It just felt like a betrial, a trial from the

300
00:18:06,480 --> 00:18:09,240
Speaker 4: abvy of Clinck's point of view in terms of you know,

301
00:18:09,359 --> 00:18:12,520
Speaker 4: not being honest, snopping open with us at the time

302
00:18:12,560 --> 00:18:20,200
Speaker 4: about how they were credit imbrush.

303
00:18:20,520 --> 00:18:23,680
Speaker 1: While reporting the story, Vernon came across cases of egg

304
00:18:23,720 --> 00:18:27,280
Speaker 1: theft in many countries, including ones in India and Israel,

305
00:18:27,600 --> 00:18:28,879
Speaker 1: Italy and the US.

306
00:18:29,400 --> 00:18:33,400
Speaker 2: What's interesting is that the cases we know about were

307
00:18:33,440 --> 00:18:37,560
Speaker 2: addressed in the courts. They were addressed with disciplinary committees

308
00:18:37,600 --> 00:18:40,680
Speaker 2: and medical boards, but for the most part they were

309
00:18:40,760 --> 00:18:45,160
Speaker 2: resolved with mirror slaps on the wrists of the doctors involved.

310
00:18:45,720 --> 00:18:48,840
Speaker 1: Vernon found that a doctor who stole eggs in Italy

311
00:18:49,080 --> 00:18:51,840
Speaker 1: was sentenced to jail time, which he ended up serving

312
00:18:51,920 --> 00:18:55,760
Speaker 1: under house arrest because he was in poor health. He says,

313
00:18:55,840 --> 00:18:59,040
Speaker 1: doctors accused of egg theft in Israel and India have

314
00:18:59,160 --> 00:19:03,080
Speaker 1: been able to continue with their careers. In August twenty

315
00:19:03,119 --> 00:19:08,399
Speaker 1: twenty three, Greek police arrested eight Mediterranean Fertility Institute staff members,

316
00:19:08,840 --> 00:19:13,280
Speaker 1: including the clinic's founding doctor and its scientific director. Both

317
00:19:13,320 --> 00:19:18,200
Speaker 1: remain in jail awaiting possible trial. The doctor's lawyer didn't

318
00:19:18,200 --> 00:19:22,040
Speaker 1: respond to a request for comment. The scientific director's lawyer

319
00:19:22,080 --> 00:19:24,119
Speaker 1: said in an email that a list of questions from

320
00:19:24,160 --> 00:19:28,480
Speaker 1: Bloomberg about the police case contained inaccuracies, but didn't specify

321
00:19:28,520 --> 00:19:32,760
Speaker 1: what they were. It's unclear what the consequences will ultimately

322
00:19:32,800 --> 00:19:37,520
Speaker 1: be for those involved, but for Maria the impact has

323
00:19:37,600 --> 00:19:41,359
Speaker 1: been severe. She told Vernon that finding out her eggs

324
00:19:41,359 --> 00:19:45,200
Speaker 1: had been stolen felt like a violation, like a rape.

325
00:19:45,760 --> 00:19:51,040
Speaker 2: Maria after her first reaction of thinking, my gosh, do

326
00:19:51,080 --> 00:19:53,719
Speaker 2: I have Do I have a biological child or children

327
00:19:53,760 --> 00:19:57,040
Speaker 2: that I don't know about, she started asking the questions

328
00:19:57,040 --> 00:19:59,879
Speaker 2: of the police and it started with do you know

329
00:20:00,119 --> 00:20:02,320
Speaker 2: who this woman is who got my eggs? And the

330
00:20:02,359 --> 00:20:05,440
Speaker 2: answer is yes they do. Do they know whether she

331
00:20:05,520 --> 00:20:08,200
Speaker 2: has had a child and the answer was that they

332
00:20:08,200 --> 00:20:08,720
Speaker 2: didn't know.

333
00:20:09,480 --> 00:20:12,840
Speaker 1: Maria says the police told her Greek privacy law forbade

334
00:20:12,880 --> 00:20:14,879
Speaker 1: them from giving her the name of the woman who

335
00:20:14,960 --> 00:20:18,440
Speaker 1: received her eggs, but they could give her something else,

336
00:20:19,400 --> 00:20:19,959
Speaker 1: a code.

337
00:20:20,560 --> 00:20:23,960
Speaker 2: Each woman who did IVF at this clinic was given

338
00:20:24,280 --> 00:20:26,240
Speaker 2: a code, a customer code, and.

339
00:20:26,200 --> 00:20:29,639
Speaker 1: The police gave Maria her own code and the code

340
00:20:29,640 --> 00:20:32,680
Speaker 1: of the woman who received her eggs, and one day

341
00:20:33,280 --> 00:20:37,040
Speaker 1: Maria would like to meet her, but first they'd have

342
00:20:37,080 --> 00:20:37,920
Speaker 1: to find each other.

343
00:20:38,400 --> 00:20:40,480
Speaker 2: She's hoping that there will be a way that she

344
00:20:40,600 --> 00:20:43,840
Speaker 2: can be connected to the woman who got her eggs

345
00:20:44,320 --> 00:20:47,719
Speaker 2: through some official mechanism. If there isn't, she thinks there

346
00:20:47,760 --> 00:20:49,240
Speaker 2: might be other ways. You know, you could set up

347
00:20:49,240 --> 00:20:53,119
Speaker 2: a Facebook group. You could say, you know, the Hanya

348
00:20:53,160 --> 00:20:57,440
Speaker 2: egg scandal group, and let's say you know egg egg

349
00:20:57,480 --> 00:21:01,800
Speaker 2: donor one, two three four seeking egg recipient, you know, five, six,

350
00:21:01,840 --> 00:21:04,040
Speaker 2: seven eight. So that's the sort of thing that she

351
00:21:04,200 --> 00:21:09,000
Speaker 2: thinks about practically, but in reality, what's haunting her and

352
00:21:09,040 --> 00:21:14,160
Speaker 2: she's you know, she's getting psychological help, is that her

353
00:21:14,280 --> 00:21:19,320
Speaker 2: child might someday meet and fall in love with that

354
00:21:19,440 --> 00:21:23,960
Speaker 2: child's half sibling. And she doesn't know whether this woman

355
00:21:23,960 --> 00:21:27,280
Speaker 2: who got her eggs is from Australia or the US,

356
00:21:27,560 --> 00:21:31,520
Speaker 2: or Canada or Italy or maybe Greece, and quite possibly

357
00:21:31,800 --> 00:21:35,320
Speaker 2: her own town. That if there is this other child,

358
00:21:35,359 --> 00:21:38,000
Speaker 2: that maybe that child is a is a schoolmate of

359
00:21:38,040 --> 00:21:39,520
Speaker 2: her of her child.

360
00:21:40,280 --> 00:21:43,760
Speaker 1: While police have identified as many as seventy five cases

361
00:21:43,760 --> 00:21:47,840
Speaker 1: of egg theft at the Mediterranean Fertility Institute. A Greek

362
00:21:48,040 --> 00:21:52,240
Speaker 1: judicial source told Vernon the final count could be much higher,

363
00:21:53,320 --> 00:21:57,760
Speaker 1: and Vernon says the ramifications are profound, not just for

364
00:21:57,800 --> 00:22:00,679
Speaker 1: the women whose eggs were stolen, but also for the

365
00:22:00,720 --> 00:22:02,160
Speaker 1: women who received them.

366
00:22:02,800 --> 00:22:06,200
Speaker 2: We've been talking about Maria, but what about the woman

367
00:22:06,200 --> 00:22:09,399
Speaker 2: who got her eggs. We're talking about scores of cases

368
00:22:09,760 --> 00:22:14,040
Speaker 2: just in this one investigation. What about all of those

369
00:22:14,119 --> 00:22:17,280
Speaker 2: women who may or may not be informed in the

370
00:22:17,320 --> 00:22:23,000
Speaker 2: near future that their children were conceived from stolen eggs.

371
00:22:23,400 --> 00:22:25,679
Speaker 2: What about all the women and families who went to

372
00:22:26,320 --> 00:22:29,560
Speaker 2: that clinic and aren't informed, who think, gosh, maybe I

373
00:22:29,600 --> 00:22:33,399
Speaker 2: got stolen eggs. You know, Maria says, you know these

374
00:22:33,520 --> 00:22:36,520
Speaker 2: if she has a child, you know, it's my child.

375
00:22:36,520 --> 00:22:39,040
Speaker 2: But it's not my child, it's this other woman's or

376
00:22:39,040 --> 00:22:43,679
Speaker 2: this other famili's child. But what's to stop someone like

377
00:22:43,760 --> 00:22:46,160
Speaker 2: Maria from trying to claim custody.

378
00:22:46,920 --> 00:22:50,360
Speaker 1: Vernon says cases like these lay there just how much

379
00:22:50,480 --> 00:22:54,840
Speaker 1: trust is involved with undergoing IVF and how easily that

380
00:22:54,960 --> 00:22:59,320
Speaker 1: trust can be exploited, Because he says, if a patient

381
00:22:59,480 --> 00:23:03,560
Speaker 1: can't trust her clinic, how can anyone who's done IVF

382
00:23:03,760 --> 00:23:07,399
Speaker 1: or used a donor egg be certain that they haven't

383
00:23:07,440 --> 00:23:13,040
Speaker 1: received a stolen egg or that someone else hasn't received theirs.

384
00:23:19,600 --> 00:23:22,760
Speaker 1: That was the second episode in The Human Egg Trade,

385
00:23:22,920 --> 00:23:26,919
Speaker 1: our special series about the booming global market for human eggs.

386
00:23:27,800 --> 00:23:31,000
Speaker 1: The next episode in the series follows one couple's globe

387
00:23:31,000 --> 00:23:34,560
Speaker 1: spanning journey to start a family and what it costs them.

388
00:23:35,040 --> 00:23:40,040
Speaker 2: They call their sun a quarter million dollar baby, right.

389
00:23:40,119 --> 00:23:42,560
Speaker 2: They say, by the time they finished the process with him,

390
00:23:42,920 --> 00:23:44,639
Speaker 2: they'd spent about a quarter million dollars.

391
00:23:44,880 --> 00:23:47,200
Speaker 1: And did they go into debt? They did go into debt.

392
00:23:47,280 --> 00:23:47,480
Speaker 4: Yes.

393
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:52,560
Speaker 1: Look for that episode the Friday after next. For more

394
00:23:52,600 --> 00:23:55,320
Speaker 1: in depth reporting on how the human egg has become

395
00:23:55,440 --> 00:23:59,560
Speaker 1: a precious resource traded around the world, read The Egg,

396
00:24:00,040 --> 00:24:03,520
Speaker 1: an investigation by Bloomberg BusinessWeek and The Big Take. You

397
00:24:03,560 --> 00:24:06,640
Speaker 1: can read The Egg on the Bloomberg terminal, Bloomberg dot

398
00:24:06,640 --> 00:24:09,399
Speaker 1: com or in the January twenty twenty five issue of

399
00:24:09,440 --> 00:24:14,760
Speaker 1: Bloomberg BusinessWeek. This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News.

400
00:24:14,920 --> 00:24:18,159
Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Holder. This episode was produced by David Fox.

401
00:24:18,280 --> 00:24:21,920
Speaker 1: It was edited by Tracy Samuelson, Lauren Etter, and Ken Armstrong,

402
00:24:22,320 --> 00:24:25,400
Speaker 1: who was fact checked by Adriannatapia and mixed and sound

403
00:24:25,400 --> 00:24:29,280
Speaker 1: designed by Alex Ugia and Jessica Beck. Our senior producer

404
00:24:29,320 --> 00:24:33,040
Speaker 1: is Naomi Shavin. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Our

405
00:24:33,080 --> 00:24:37,320
Speaker 1: executive producer is Nicole Beamster. Board Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's

406
00:24:37,359 --> 00:24:40,480
Speaker 1: head of podcasts. If you liked this episode, make sure

407
00:24:40,520 --> 00:24:43,200
Speaker 1: to subscribe and review The Big Take wherever you listen

408
00:24:43,240 --> 00:24:46,960
Speaker 1: to podcasts. It helps people find the show. Thanks for listening.

409
00:24:47,240 --> 00:24:48,680
Speaker 1: We'll be back next week.