Reproductive health and research.

Existing law prohibits human oocytes or embryos from being acquired, sold, offered for sale, received, or otherwise transferred for valuable consideration for medical research or development of medical therapies, and prohibits payment in excess of the amount of reimbursement of direct expenses to be made to any research subject to encourage women to produce human oocytes for the purposes of medical research. Before obtaining informed consent from a subject for assisted oocyte production (AOP) or any alternative method of ovarian retrieval on a subject for the purpose of procuring oocytes for research or the development of medical therapies, existing law requires a physician and surgeon to provide to the subject a standardized medically accurate written summary of health and consumer issues associated with AOP, as specified. This bill would instead require women providing human oocytes for research to be compensated for their time, discomfort, and inconvenience in the same manner as other research subjects, as prescribed and determined by a human subject research panel or institutional review board. The bill would make a research program or project that offers to compensate women for their time, discomfort, and inconvenience for providing human oocytes for research subject to specified provisions of existing law relating to institutional review board requirements and written records. The bill would require the institutional review board to disregard the amount of compensation if a woman providing human oocytes for fertility is compensated, human oocytes or embryos in excess of those needed for fertility are offered for research, and certain conditions are met. The bill would additionally require an institutional review board that reviews and approves medical and scientific research to require of any research program or project that comes under its review that involves AOP or any alternative method of oocyte retrieval to inform the subject that ongoing studies will continue to assess the long-term health impacts of ovarian stimulation and oocyte retrieval.