Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: In early twenty twenty, after a long struggle to get pregnant,
Speaker 2: Maria and her husband started IVF, but Maria still considered
Speaker 2: herself lucky.
Speaker 1: She lives on the island of Crete in the town
Speaker 1: called Hanya, where, much to her good fortune, one of
Speaker 1: the most prominent fertility clinics had been set up a
Speaker 1: couple decades earlier.
Speaker 2: That's Vernon Silver. He's an investigative reporter at Bloomberg, and
Speaker 2: he traveled from his home base in Rome to Greece
Speaker 2: to report this story. Maria is a pseudonym. She asked
Speaker 2: us not to use her real name and didn't want
Speaker 2: to be recorded. Her hometown of Hanya is a seaside
Speaker 2: tourist destination with a close knit community famous for its
Speaker 2: centuries old harbor. The clinic where Maria went is about
Speaker 2: a ten minute walk from that harbor, called the Mediterranean
Speaker 2: Fertility Institute, and it drew customers from all over the world.
Speaker 1: In recent years, it had become a hub for customers
Speaker 1: from Italy, or Australia or the US. So right there
Speaker 1: in her backyard was a clinic that could provide exactly
Speaker 1: what she and her husband needed to try to have
Speaker 1: this baby.
Speaker 2: It all seemed pretty standard. The clinic did a procedure
Speaker 2: to retrieve Maria's eggs. Staff fertilized them with her husband's
Speaker 2: sperm and implanted an embryo. She told Vernon it took
Speaker 2: three cycles of IVF, but finally it worked.
Speaker 1: She eventually did get pregnant and she had a child.
Speaker 1: Her dream had come true.
Speaker 2: Maria became a mother and for the next three years
Speaker 2: she raised her baby, who grew into a toddler. Then,
Speaker 2: one day in February twenty twenty four, she got a
Speaker 2: call from the police.
Speaker 1: The police asker had come down to the police station
Speaker 1: and she walked into the room and there were two
Speaker 1: police officers and a third person who was a psychologist.
Speaker 1: And when Maria saw the psychologist, her heart sunk. She knew,
Speaker 1: she knew she was about to get bad news. They
Speaker 1: sat her down, The four of them sat around a desk,
Speaker 1: and they broke the news to her that their investigation
Speaker 1: had found that her eggs had been stolen.
Speaker 2: Stolen. She didn't donate them or sell them. She initially
Speaker 2: didn't even know they'd been taken from her.
Speaker 1: When she had had her eggs harvested to make her
Speaker 1: own child. People at this clinic, according to the police,
Speaker 1: had secretly taken about half of those eggs and given
Speaker 1: them to another woman.
Speaker 2: This is episode two of The Human Egg Trade, a
Speaker 2: special series from Bloomberg's investigations team and The Big Take
Speaker 2: podcast about the booming global market for human eggs. Bloomberg
Speaker 2: reporters across five continents and eleven countries have spent the
Speaker 2: last year trying to understand how human eggs are bought
Speaker 2: and sold around the world. They've shed light on the
Speaker 2: thirty five billion dollar market for assisted reproduction, an opaque
Speaker 2: market where regulations vary widely from country to country. It's
Speaker 2: a patchwork that can push some people to travel great
Speaker 2: distances in their quest for a child, and can also
Speaker 2: create opportunities for bad actors looking for a cut of
Speaker 2: the trade. Today we zoom in on one clinic in
Speaker 2: Greece where police have identified as many as seventy five
Speaker 2: cases of egg theft. Seventy five cases where a woman's
Speaker 2: eggs were allegedly taken without her consent and sold or
Speaker 2: donated to another person. It's a story that shows how
Speaker 2: the actions of one clinic can have ripple effects around
Speaker 2: the world that can reverberate for decades, and it reveals
Speaker 2: the unique ways that the fertility industry runs not only
Speaker 2: on capital, but on trust. Will continue after the break
Speaker 2: After a year of digging into the fertility industry, Bloomberg's
Speaker 2: Vernon Silver says, the trade of human eggs behaves much
Speaker 2: like the trade of any commodity.
Speaker 1: Like any global commodity trade, where you ship things, where
Speaker 1: you invest, where you go for the best deal, depends
Speaker 1: on regulations and prices, and it's kind of like squeezing
Speaker 1: a water balloon, where if there's pressure at one place,
Speaker 1: you know everybody's going to go somewhere else.
Speaker 2: In recent years, as other fertility hotspots like India and
Speaker 2: Thailand tighten their regulations, and after Russia began its full
Speaker 2: scale invasion of Ukraine, Vernon says, some of that trade
Speaker 2: shifted to Greece. If you're a couple or a person
Speaker 2: needing a fertility treatment, what is the pitch that Greece
Speaker 2: gives to them.
Speaker 1: Greece has positioned itself, along with other countries that have
Speaker 1: nice beaches, as a location for medical tourism, which applies
Speaker 1: to fertility treatments. When it comes to eggs and the
Speaker 1: other services like surrogacy an IVF its prices are lower
Speaker 1: than in the United States, for example, in other Western countries.
Speaker 2: The country's legal framework is another selling point.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of restrictions in a lot of
Speaker 1: countries that make it harder to do IVF or to
Speaker 1: get a donor egg in a country like Italy, for example,
Speaker 1: or Australia, and those restrictions are much less in Greece.
Speaker 1: So it's a combination of legal framework, money access and
Speaker 1: a friendly accepting economy based really from the government that
Speaker 1: wants to promote this sort of thing.
Speaker 2: And nice beaches and nice.
Speaker 1: Beaches, I mean. Part of what happens when you are
Speaker 1: seeking a fertility treatment, especially if it involves you know,
Speaker 1: a donor egg, is somebody will travel, let's say, with
Speaker 1: her husband to Greece, go to the clinic. The husband
Speaker 1: will provide a sperm sample that will be used to
Speaker 1: fertilize the donor egg. They wait around on the beach
Speaker 1: in a nice hotel, have a good meal while the
Speaker 1: wife is being prepared to have this growing embryo implanted
Speaker 1: in her. And so it's always good to have a
Speaker 1: nice place to do this. That's pleasant and hang out
Speaker 1: and cost effective.
Speaker 2: Vernon says Greece's fertility industry has another geographic advantage, proximity
Speaker 2: to Eastern Europe.
Speaker 1: Borders on poorer Eastern European countries, where there are women
Speaker 1: who might want to be paid for their eggs and
Speaker 1: also to be surrogates, which is a related industry in
Speaker 1: the fertility industry.
Speaker 2: Women from countries like Georgia and Bulgaria, who Vernon says,
Speaker 2: are often motivated to sell their eggs because it pays
Speaker 2: more than many other kinds of work. But that dynamic
Speaker 2: has created opportunities for abuse.
Speaker 1: Going back a decade, there had been a series of
Speaker 1: busts by the Greek authorities, mostly in the northern city
Speaker 1: of Thessaloniki, where they had tried to crack down on
Speaker 1: people being pressured or manipulated or trafficked into giving up
Speaker 1: their eggs. And so while Greece is not the biggest
Speaker 1: market for eggs, you have Ukraine, you have Spain, which
Speaker 1: are sort of massive hubs for egg banks, and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. You had some of the worst behavior
Speaker 1: already being exposed in Greece.
Speaker 2: The clinic where Maria went, the Mediterranean Fertility Institute had
Speaker 2: been on the radar of Greek regulators for years. In
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, the Greek agency overseeing medically assisted reproduction sent
Speaker 2: a team of inspectors to the clinic to look into
Speaker 2: a complaint about its surrogacy program. The team ultimately voted
Speaker 2: to suspend the clinic's license for improper record keeping, but
Speaker 2: the suspension went unenforced and the clinic remained open. It
Speaker 2: would take another four years before Greek authorities were once
Speaker 2: again at its door.
Speaker 1: A few months before the police invited Mario over to
Speaker 1: break her the bad news about her own eggs. There
Speaker 1: had been a bust and this had to do with
Speaker 1: surrogacy and other issues, not egg theft yet, and because
Speaker 1: of that bust, the clinic shutdown.
Speaker 2: The police told Vernon they were once again looking into
Speaker 2: the clinic surrogacy practices, but once they got inside, they
Speaker 2: found evidence of other kinds of crime.
Speaker 1: What the police had found in their investigation of this
Speaker 1: clinic was that there were these handwritten records that showed
Speaker 1: on a certain day, an IVF patient like Maria would
Speaker 1: have her eggs removed and they would say how many
Speaker 1: there were, and on that same day, about half that
Speaker 1: many showed up in these handwritten records as being donations
Speaker 1: to another woman of fresh eggs, meaning non frozen eggs,
Speaker 1: eggs that had been extracted that day, and if that
Speaker 1: woman had been the only person who had come in
Speaker 1: to get her eggs removed, the police were fairly confident
Speaker 1: that they could conclude that that exact match. For example,
Speaker 1: twelve eggs removed from patient A and then six given
Speaker 1: as a donation to patient B, and six made use
Speaker 1: of by patient A the original one. That all added
Speaker 1: up to them literally siphoning off half of the eggs
Speaker 1: for somebody else.
Speaker 2: The police also found that the clinic had a consent
Speaker 2: for him with a box that patients could check if
Speaker 2: they were willing to donate some of their unused embryos
Speaker 2: eggs that were successfully fertilized. And when the police sat
Speaker 2: down with Maria, they really wanted to ask her about
Speaker 2: that piece of paper.
Speaker 1: What they wanted to know from Maria was had she
Speaker 1: consented to this quote.
Speaker 2: Donation and had she She.
Speaker 1: Said she definitely did not. In fact, she remembered the
Speaker 1: consent form that she signed, and she said, you know,
Speaker 1: this consent form had a box to tick about donating
Speaker 1: any unused embryos which she did not tick, and nothing
Speaker 1: about donating any excess eggs, and so at that point,
Speaker 1: as it would turn out that she was one of
Speaker 1: scores of women who were getting similar calls with the
Speaker 1: police telling them the same thing and wanting to know
Speaker 1: the same basic question, did you consent to this? Because
Speaker 1: the records we have found showed that half of your
Speaker 1: eggs went to somebody else.
Speaker 2: If you're a woman in Maria's position leaving the clinic
Speaker 2: that day and the police never call you, how would
Speaker 2: you ever know that your eggs had been stolen?
Speaker 1: You would never know. Possibly you could know later on
Speaker 1: if somebody did a twenty three and me test, or
Speaker 1: if you walk down the street and saw someone who
Speaker 1: looked a lot like your own kid. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are ways conceivably to find out.
Speaker 2: A DNA test, a gut feeling, but in the moment,
Speaker 2: it's impossible to know. That's because a woman undergoing an
Speaker 2: egg retrievle is typically given anesthesia. It's only after she
Speaker 2: comes to that she's told exactly how many eggs were collected.
Speaker 1: But the really haunting aspect of all of this is
Speaker 1: that if the police hadn't been doing an investigation of
Speaker 1: this clinic, which they were doing for other reasons. If
Speaker 1: that hadn't happened, she likely would never have been called
Speaker 1: to the police station and been told this information, and she.
Speaker 2: Might never know when we come back, what happened to
Speaker 2: the eggs and embryos stored at the Mediterranean Fertility Institute
Speaker 2: when it suddenly shut down, and what the fallout of
Speaker 2: the investigation has meant for the women whose eggs were stolen.
Speaker 2: Earlier this year, Bloomberg's Vernon Silver went to visit a
Speaker 2: secure room at Kanya General Hospital on the Greek island
Speaker 2: of Crete. He was there to see the genetic material
Speaker 2: that authorities had seized from the Mediterranean Fertility Institute without sansos.
Speaker 3: Is it top secret? Can I take a picture?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: A doctor punched a passcode into a keypad and unlocked
Speaker 2: the door to the climate controlled room.
Speaker 3: It's nice and cold, nice and cold, of course.
Speaker 2: Inside, they showed Vernon the six rounded metal containers that
Speaker 2: were lined up against a wall.
Speaker 3: It looks like R two D two from Star Wars.
Speaker 2: The canisters looked like a cross between an ancient Greek
Speaker 2: amphora and a propane tank. Rounded metal containers with wheels
Speaker 2: on the bottom and two handles on top. The lids
Speaker 2: were fitted with handwritten labels and temperature monitors.
Speaker 3: In these things here they so this is an expensive
Speaker 3: operation because you also have this thing that goes down.
Speaker 3: What is that? That's the ice.
Speaker 2: The canisters were filled with liquid nitrogen and between the
Speaker 2: six of them all the genetic material that had been
Speaker 2: seized from the Mediterranean Fertility Institute. In total, they contained
Speaker 2: the eggs, embryos, and sperm of about nine hundred people.
Speaker 2: But Vernon says the canisters represent only part of the
Speaker 2: chaos that ensued from the clinic's closure.
Speaker 1: Really heartbreaking chaos, because this is a clinic that had
Speaker 1: stored embryos and eggs and hired surrogates to carry people's
Speaker 1: babies for them. So they were dealing with everything from
Speaker 1: frozen eggs and embryos to pregnant women to babies who
Speaker 1: had to literally be sorted out with DNA tests.
Speaker 2: In the early morning hours of August eighth, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: when police descended on the Mediterranean Fertility Institute, the clinic
Speaker 2: was working with a number of pregnant surrogates, and after
Speaker 2: it was abruptly shut down, the Kanya General hospital took
Speaker 2: over their care and the care of the seventeen babies
Speaker 2: they gave birth to. It would take eight months and
Speaker 2: DNA testing to match them to their families and determine custody.
Speaker 2: Vernon says what to do with the genetic material inside
Speaker 2: the canisters was another piece of the puzzle. Some of
Speaker 2: it came from local clients like Maria, some of it
Speaker 2: had come from Ukrainian cryobanks, whose staff sent it out
Speaker 2: of the country for safe keeping after Russia invaded, and
Speaker 2: some of it had come from the clinic's foreign clients.
Speaker 2: The embryologists charged with caring for them told Vernon the
Speaker 2: canisters contained frozen eggs and embryos from about one hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty five people who had come from outside Greece.
Speaker 2: Some of those people had traveled from as far away
Speaker 2: as India and Australia to use the clinic services, and
Speaker 2: some were clients of Sam.
Speaker 4: Everingham, three parents were contacting me saying, look way here
Speaker 4: for the birth of that child, but no one's here.
Speaker 4: The staff of all gone. They're in gile wirestock.
Speaker 2: Sam is the founder of Growing Families Global. Its mission
Speaker 2: is to support and inform people looking for safe, ethical
Speaker 2: fertility services. He says people often reach out to his
Speaker 2: organization when they can't source surrogates or donors in their
Speaker 2: own countries and are hoping to find information about options overseas.
Speaker 2: Representatives from the Mediterranean Fertility Institute had spoken at events
Speaker 2: his organization hosted in Australia. He'd even gone to visit
Speaker 2: the facility himself, and he says he was shocked when
Speaker 2: he heard what had gone wrong there.
Speaker 4: Oh, it was horrifying. Yeah, it was really tough. We
Speaker 4: had to get them in touch with the Greek lawyers
Speaker 4: to help out there. Some of them wanted to take
Speaker 4: cases against the clinic, many of them wanted to get
Speaker 4: embryos out. We had to do a lot of work
Speaker 4: to try and get embryo shipping happening to other countries,
Speaker 4: and that was complicated because of the rules in Greece
Speaker 4: around embryo export. So it ended up being a really
Speaker 4: difficult lesson for people around the risks of cross border
Speaker 4: reproductive care. You can't be on the ground looking at
Speaker 4: what these planks are doing, and they'd pulled the wall
Speaker 4: over the eyes of so many people.
Speaker 2: Seeing the fallout from the closure of the Mediterranean Fertility
Speaker 2: Institute made Sam re examine his own experience with the
Speaker 2: fertility industry.
Speaker 4: I suddenly started questioning the kind of things that were
Speaker 4: happening in India. And we'd done it all those years before,
Speaker 4: and I did organize some DNA testing for our daughters
Speaker 4: because they are they look different.
Speaker 2: Sam and his husband have teenage twin daughters born through
Speaker 2: a surrogate in India. They'd been told the girls were
Speaker 2: born from eggs from the same woman, but doubts had lingered, and.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so look we've got the DNA test done it
Speaker 4: and sure enough we've been told they were the same egdona,
Speaker 4: but the results so that they weren't. And look, you know,
Speaker 4: it doesn't matter for us in terms of, you know,
Speaker 4: loving our kids, but it's kind of weird when a
Speaker 4: click tells you they've used one egdona and you find out,
Speaker 4: well know, they hadn't.
Speaker 2: Once Sam and his family had the results, they discovered
Speaker 2: they weren't alone.
Speaker 4: We suddenly started realizing we're talking to other parents who'd
Speaker 4: done the same kind of tests and found the same
Speaker 4: sort of thing, but the kids they'd had in the
Speaker 4: same country were also different genetically.
Speaker 2: And obviously, as you said, this doesn't change anything about
Speaker 2: how you love your children. But what did it feel
Speaker 2: like having that revelation and that surprise.
Speaker 4: It just felt like a betrial, a trial from the
Speaker 4: abby of Clink's point of view in terms of, you know,
Speaker 4: not being honestno being open with us at the time
Speaker 4: about how they were credit imbrush.
Speaker 2: While reporting the story, Vernon came across cases of egg
Speaker 2: theft in many countries, including ones in India and Israel,
Speaker 2: Italy and the US.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is that the cases we know about were
Speaker 1: addressed in the courts. They were addressed with disciplinary committees
Speaker 1: and medical boards, but for the most part, they were
Speaker 1: resolved with mirror slaps on the wrists of the doctors involved.
Speaker 2: Vernon found that a doctor who stole eggs in Italy
Speaker 2: was sentenced to jail time, which he ended up serving
Speaker 2: under house arrest because he was in poor health. He says,
Speaker 2: doctors accused of egg theft in Israel and India have
Speaker 2: been able to continue with their careers. In August twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, Greek police arrested eight Mediterranean Fertility Institute staff members,
Speaker 2: including the clinic's founding doctor and its scientific director. Both
Speaker 2: remain in jail. Awaiting possible trial. The doctor's lawyer didn't
Speaker 2: respond to a request for comment. The scientific director's lawyer
Speaker 2: said in an email that a list of questions from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg about the police case contained inaccuracies, but didn't specify
Speaker 2: what they were. It's unclear what the consequences will ultimately
Speaker 2: be for those involved, but for Maria the impact has
Speaker 2: been severe. She told Vernon that finding out her eggs
Speaker 2: had been stolen felt like a violation, like a rape.
Speaker 1: Maria after her first reaction of thinking, my gosh, do
Speaker 1: I have Do I have a biological child or children
Speaker 1: that I don't know about, she started asking the questions
Speaker 1: of the police and it started with do you know
Speaker 1: who this will is who got my eggs? And the
Speaker 1: answer is yes they do. Do they know whether she
Speaker 1: has had a child, And the answer was that they
Speaker 1: didn't know.
Speaker 2: Maria says the police told her Greek privacy law forbade
Speaker 2: them from giving her the name of the woman who
Speaker 2: received her eggs, but they could give her something else,
Speaker 2: a code.
Speaker 1: Each woman who did IVF at this clinic was given
Speaker 1: a code, a customer code.
Speaker 2: And the police gave Maria her own code and the
Speaker 2: code of the woman who received her eggs, and one
Speaker 2: day Maria would like to meet her, but first they'd
Speaker 2: have to find each other.
Speaker 1: She's hoping that there will be a way that she
Speaker 1: can be connected to the woman who got her eggs
Speaker 1: through some official mechanism. If there isn't, she thinks there
Speaker 1: might be other ways. You know, you could set up
Speaker 1: a Facebook group. You could say, you know, the Honya
Speaker 1: egg scandal group, and let's say, you know egg egg
Speaker 1: donor one, two three four seeking egg recipient five six
Speaker 1: seven eight. So that's the sort of thing that she
Speaker 1: thinks about practically, but in reality, what's haunting her and
Speaker 1: she's getting psychological help, is that her child might someday
Speaker 1: meet and fall in love with that child's half sibling.
Speaker 1: And she doesn't know whether this woman who got her
Speaker 1: eggs is from Australia or the US, or Canada or
Speaker 1: Italy or maybe Greece, and quite possibly her own town.
Speaker 1: That if there is this other child, that maybe that
Speaker 1: child is a schoolmate of her child.
Speaker 2: While police have identified as many as seventy five cases
Speaker 2: of egg theft at the Mediterranean Fertility Institute, a Greek
Speaker 2: judicial source told Vernon the final count could be much higher,
Speaker 2: and Vernon says the ramifications are profound, not just for
Speaker 2: the women whose eggs were stolen, but also for the
Speaker 2: women who received them.
Speaker 1: We've been talking about Maria, but what about the woman
Speaker 1: who got her eggs. We're talking about scores of cases
Speaker 1: just in this one investigation. What about all of those
Speaker 1: women who may or may not be informed in the
Speaker 1: near future that their children were conceived from stolen eggs?
Speaker 1: What about all the women and families who went to
Speaker 1: that clinic and aren't informed, who think, gosh, maybe I
Speaker 1: got stolen eggs. You know, Maria says, you know these
Speaker 1: if she has a child, you know, it's my child.
Speaker 1: But it's not my child, it's this other woman's or
Speaker 1: this other famili's child. But what's to stop someone like
Speaker 1: Maria from trying to claim custody?
Speaker 2: Vernon says cases like these lay there just how much
Speaker 2: trust is involved with undergoing IVF and how easily that
Speaker 2: trust can be exploited, Because he says, if a patient
Speaker 2: can't trust her clinic, how can anyone who's done IVF
Speaker 2: or used a donor egg be certain that they haven't
Speaker 2: received a stolen egg or that someone else hasn't received theirs.
Speaker 2: That was the second episode in The Human Egg Trade,
Speaker 2: our special series about the booming global market for human eggs.
Speaker 2: The next episode in the series follows one couple's globe
Speaker 2: spanning journey to start a family and what it costs them.
Speaker 1: They call their son a quarter million dollar baby, right.
Speaker 1: They say, by the time they finished the process with him,
Speaker 1: they'd spent about a quarter million dollars.
Speaker 2: And did they go into debt? They did go into debt. Yes.
Speaker 2: For more in depth reporting on how the human egg
Speaker 2: has become a precious resource traded around the world, read
Speaker 2: The Egg, an investigation by Bloomberg BusinessWeek and The Big Take.
Speaker 2: You can read The Egg on the Bloomberg terminal, Bloomberg
Speaker 2: dot com or in the January twenty twenty five issue
Speaker 2: of Bloomberg BusinessWeek. This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News.
Speaker 2: I'm Sarah Holder. This episode was produced by David Fox.
Speaker 2: It was edited by Tracy Samuelson, Lauren Etter, and Ken Armstrong,
Speaker 2: who was fact checked by Adriannatapia and mixed and sound
Speaker 2: designed by Alex Zuguiera and Jessica Beck. Our senior producer
Speaker 2: is Naomi Shavin. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Our
Speaker 2: executive producer is Nicole Beemster. Board Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's
Speaker 2: head of podcasts. If you liked this episode, make sure
Speaker 2: to subscribe and review The Big Take wherever you listen
Speaker 2: to podcasts. It helps people find the show. Thanks for listening.