A law professor is calling for women to be paid for donating their eggs to medical research.
In the United States, women who sell their eggs for stem cell research are being paid up to $10,000.
Professor Loane Skene from the University of Melbourne says stem cell research could lead to cures for a range of diseases.
She says donating eggs is different to donating sperm or blood, and women are reluctant to undergo the procedure.
"For a woman to donate eggs, she has to take drugs to encourage her to ovulate and to produce a number of eggs at the same time, and then she has to have a surgical procedure where an instrument is inserted into her body to retrieve these eggs to donate for research," she said.
Professor Skene says as stem cell technology develops, there will be a greater demand for eggs for research.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/07/2618994.htm
