NY Stem Cell Committee Approves Payment to Egg Donors

State "laboratories of democracy" at work:

In recognition of the fact that New York State currently permits compensation for oocyte donation for reproductive purposes for expenses and for time, inconvenience and burden, and such compensation is widely considered to be ethically permissible, and since there is no significant difference in the risks associated with oocyte donation solely for research purposes and oocyte donation for reproductive purposes and the lack of certain types of payment to oocyte donors for research purposes can serve as an impediment to furthering stem cell research, the Ethics Committee recommends that the Funding Committee adopt changes to the standards for hESC research with regard to the compensation of donors...

Critics have worried that paying egg donors encourages the poor to undergo an uncomfortable and mildly risky procedure. Personally, I don't see how egg donation is ethically different (in terms of risk to the donor) from any other equally uncomfortable/risky research involving healthy human subjects.