An anonymous couple offered the cash for ova matching certain traits. If you're a young woman who could use an extra $50,000, look no further. It's not the lottery, and there is a catch: you must be at least 5'10" with SAT scores of at least 1400 and you have be willing to give up your ova. That was the focus of an advertisement recently placed in the newspapers of several Ivy League and elite universities, including Penn, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford and California Institute of Technology. The married couple who placed the ad requested eggs from a tall, intelligent, athletic college-age girl who has "no major family medical issues." They also requested that all candidates have SAT scores of at least 1400. And the donor would receive a cool $50,000 for services rendered, the largest sum of money ever to be offered in exchange for an ova donation. The story has received local and national attention during the past two weeks, with articles running in The New York Times and The Philadelphia Daily News and television coverage on CNN, Fox News and WB Network Channel 17. The infertile couple, who wishes to remain anonymous, placed a $700 half-page advertisement in The Daily Pennsylvanian and several other top-tiered college newspapers with the help of attorney Darlene Pinkerton of the San Diego law firm Hitt & Pinkerton. Pinkerton told the Daily News that the couple is "trying to find a donor that resembles their family." In this spirit, the white couple wants to keep its child of the same race. The two have received upwards of 200 responses, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education. While Pinkerton appears to have no qualms with the couple's well financed search strategy, not everyone buys into her view. Six-foot-tall College freshman and Penn women's basketball team members Julie Epton said that while the money "definitely would be helpful with [paying for] school and maybe with medical school later on," she "just couldn't ever see doing that." She likened the couple's selection process to genetic engineering, saying, "I don't agree with that." "There are a lot of kids out there, kids that you can adopt, kids that no one wants who would love to be adopted," Epton added. While Epton would fall just short of the couple's specifications with her SAT score of 1390, Wharton freshman Marissa Tuchinsky fits the couple's description to a tee. At 5'11 1/2" inches tall with an SAT score of 1520, the former high school track and basketball star would make a perfect candidate. She said she was flattered that she fits the requirements, but that she "wouldn't feel comfortable having someone who is half my biological child wandering around, not knowing me." Tuchinsky said the health risks involved also deterred her from replying to the advertisement, even though friends and hallmates have been abuzz with the idea. "My mom is in the medical profession," she explained, "and she was worried I would mess up my own fertility." The egg harvesting procedure requires that the donor take hormones to enhance her ova production. College freshman Sarah Camp, a rower on the women's novice crew team, was intrigued enough by the advertisement she saw to e-mail in a response requesting more information. Camp, who estimates her height at between 6' and 6'1" meets the couple's description as well, with an SAT score of 1510. After learning about the harvesting process and thinking the prospect of donation over more carefully, Camp decided she would not apply. She said the fact that money was being offered in exchange for a human life bothered her. "I really don't think that there should be a market for this," she reflected.
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