Routledge releases medical anthropologist Diane Tober’s groundbreaking study of human egg donors this week, cracking open the conversations about IVF, women’s reproductive health, rights to bodily autonomy, and parenting before an important presidential election. Eggonomics: The Global Market in Human Eggs and the Donors Who Supply Them is both timely and jaw-dropping in its findings and implications. In February 2024, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) where Diane Tober is a tenured professor, paused in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling which was later overturned. This is the first study to examine the experiences of egg donors. 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 which 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…

Diane Tober pulls back the clinical curtain on the multibillion-dollar global egg industry in her new book coming out in October. A medical anthropologist recently tenured at the University of Alabama, Tober has conducted the first study of egg donors and reveals the introduction of private equity into fertility medicine. The recent Alabama Supreme Court decision, which upended IVF procedures at the teaching hospital in Birmingham where Diane teaches, punted fertility medicine like a political football. And the rights of women who can afford the out-of-pocket medical expenses starting at $40K to harvest their own eggs and insert fertilized eggs into her own uterus, found quick defense in popular opinion. But what of egg donors who undergo the same medical procedure of hormonal stimulation and egg retrieval for intended parents whose fertility issues prevent them from conceiving a child without medical intervention? They too might get a pass from the public. But what of the women who sell their eggs? They might be called donors, but they receive financial compensation. What happens when women are reduced to the value of biomedical products? Tracing the journey of egg donors from recruitment, screening, medical procedures, and post-operative care, Tober lets these women speak about their role in supplying valuable commodities. Her fieldwork in the US and Spain explores the clinical spaces where egg donors’ bodies are tested, prodded, and poked for ever-increasing sums of profit. Technological innovations allowed the egg donation industry to grow with exponential profits attracting private equity investments in…

Six or seven years ago my advice to aspiring authors of nonfiction books was to build an audience platform by blogging. An example of how critical blogging could be to securing a publishing contract can be found in the case of Ann Marie Ackermann, author of Death of an Assassin: The True Story of the German Murderer Who Died Defending Robert E. Lee. After an initial assessment of her manuscript, I had recommended she start a historical true-crime blog, and she did. In fact, the editor of the ideal book series at Kent State University Press became a fan of her blog and invited her to submit a book proposal. Her book won a 2018 IPPY in the True Crime category, closed a 180-year-old cold case, and has also been translated into German where it received critical acclaim and was recognized for its scholarly contribution to the history of forensics. Today, blogging may or may not be something an author decides to invest time and energy in. If your authority as an author is based on your subject-area expertise, it remains an important goal to have a visible presence on the internet establishing your credibility. Whether blogging is the best means to achieve that goal depends on you and your project. It may be more important to be listed as an expert source available to journalists and appear as a credible source in news publications covering your subject area. HARO (Help A Reporter Out) may be a better fit to…