Inherited disease screening. Most egg donating programs try to find out everything they can about their donors genetic make up so, that they would be able to minimize the chance that a baby will acquire some kind of birth defect, or serious inherited disease. Any potential egg donor will be required to provide her complete medical history. This process includes questions about the woman’s biological parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters and other blood relatives. Some egg donating programs tell their potential donors what information they need to collect, or they may also have the women work with their genetic counselor in order to identify:
Any birth defect, which required a surgery to be conducted, or which resulted in medical problems, like a cleft lip, spina bifida or any kind of a heart defect;
Some certain genetic disorders, like Huntington’s disease, hemophilia, Tay Sachs disease of sickle cell anemia, etc;
Any kind of inherited disease, which is of special interest to a potential egg recipient because of her own family history;
Any kind of major medical disorder, surgeries, mental retardation, psychiatric problems, etc.
Considering any close blood relative of a woman, who is going to become an egg donor, she is to know how old they were and what was the reason of their death. There are some common diseases, like cancer or heart diseases, which usually strike people in their middle age or when they are younger, are (at least partially) influenced by genetics.
In case if a woman, who wants to become an egg donor, does not have an access to all the necessary information, either because she was adopted or, in case if she has no informed person to ask any kind of question like that, she should better not become an egg donor.
Therefore, there exist egg donating programs, which conduct a large number of all possible genetic tests on every potential egg donor of their. Other programs prefer to select only some specific tests for each potential egg donor. Some tests are necessary to conduct, because they are required by the state law. It is also possible that a program may conduct a special test with the aim to check for a disease, genes of which are considered to be common in some ethnic group of either the potential egg donor or egg recipient. A woman may also be tested to address a genetic concern in the family of the future egg recipient, or to answer some specific questions, which are raised by this woman’s family history.
Conducting a genetic testing generally involves making a simple blood tests. Therefore, genetic testing may possibly give such an information, for which a woman may not be prepared, or which she may need some specialist’s help to understand. For example, if a woman carries a gene, which puts her at higher risk for breast cancer, than other women, or a gene, which may create a risk of some serious disease in her children, what then? Or, what if a woman gets rejected for medical or life insurance because of some of her genetic test results? That is why it is necessary to find out about the following information before conducting any genetic testing:
- Will a woman receive the results of the genetic testing?
- Is there a genetic counselor available? In case, if there is not, would the program be able to refer the woman to one?
- Will the program show anyone else the results of the genetic testing, for example the woman’s physician or gynecologist, or her insurance company?
- How can the results of this genetic testing influence the woman’s ability to get any insurance coverage in the future?
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