Date/Time
Friday
18 Apr 2025
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Location
Berkeley Way West, Colloquia Room 1104
Event Type
Non-CSTMS Event
Diane Tober
Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Alabama and Institute for Social Science Research
Osagie Obasogie
Haas Distinguished Chair and Professor of Law and Bioethics, UC Berkeley
Please join the Other & Belonging Institute in their upcoming event on Professor Tober’s new book, Eggonomics: The Global Market in Human Eggs and the Donors Who Supply Them. The talk will be facilitated by Professor Osagie Obasogie.
What happens when people are reduced to products? By pulling back the clinical curtain on the multi-billion-dollar per year global egg industry, that is the central question Eggonomics seeks to address. Tracing the emotional and physical journeys egg donors embark upon as suppliers of valuable commodities, this book reveals uncomfortable realities at the heart of the industry. Donors — and the eggs they provide — are absolutely essential to helping others create the families of their dreams. But not all clinics treat their donors as well as their paying patients, and many donors suffer as a result. Technological innovations allow the egg donation industry to expand, fueling the private equity incursion into fertility medicine, turning once-private clinics into highly profitable, multinational conglomerates. Drawing upon international anthropological fieldwork, Eggonomics reveals the clinical spaces where egg donor’s bodies are tested, prodded, and poked for ever-increasing sums of profit, eugenic forces drive donor selection, and the unrelenting pressures of global capitalism threaten medicine’s prime directive of ‘do no harm.’ Timely, meticulously researched, and written with surgical precision, Eggonomics is a crucial read for researchers, medical professionals, policymakers, and anyone considering becoming or using an egg donor.
Light refreshments will be served in the foyer outside of the room. To attend this event, please ensure to RSVP.
For access needs, please contact O’Keefe Stralka (charlotte.okeefe@berkeley.edu) at least 10 days prior to the event.