3 women kept as slaves at human egg farm were ‘fed hormones, treated like cattle’: Report
Reportedly, the women were trapped by Chinese gangs running the human egg farms under the pretext of providing them jobs as surrogates for childless couples.
A horrific allegation by three women who claimed to have escaped from a human egg farm has shocked the world. According to the Bangkok Post, these three Thai women were lured into the human-egg harvesting scheme under the pretext of being surrogates for childless couples. Tapped through social media, they allegedly found themselves victims in the scheme operated by Chinese gangsters in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
What did the women reveal?
“They took us to a house where there were 60 to 70 Thai women. The women there told us there was no (surrogacy) contracts or parents,” the woman said, reported Reuters.
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She continued that the women in captivity “would be injected to get treatment, anesthetised and their eggs would be extracted with a machine. After we got this information and it was not the same as the advertisement, we got scared, we tried to contact people back home.”
How did the women get their freedom?
According to the Bangkok Post, founder of the Pavena Foundation for Children and Women, Pavena Hongsakula’s efforts prompted the freedom of the three women. Foreign Affairs Police coordinated with Interpol to free the three women on January 30.
Hongsakula said that she learned about the three women from another victim who had to pay the gang that held her captive to buy her freedom. According to the foundation’s records, 257 Thais fell victim to human traffickers in 2024. Fifty-three were found in Thailand, and 204 were in other countries. Among them, the foundation helped rescue 152.
A livestream was also conducted on the foundation's Facebook page. “Paveena joins hands with international police to help Thai women who are victims of Chinese smuggling of Georgian eggs to be sold to third countries for artificial insemination to create children for sale, which is considered human trafficking. There are still hundreds of Thai women who have fallen victim,” read the caption of the post.
In the nearly an-hour-long livesteam, the elleged victims, who wore overalls, masks, and caps, to protect their identities, shared their stories.
How were the women lured?
One of the alleged victims told Hongsakula that she saw a job offer on Facebook promising an income of 400,000 to 600,000 (almost ₹10 to 15 lakh) baht. When contacted, the woman was allegedly told that the job was to be a surrogate for a childless couple in Georgia. The woman claimed the employer paid for her passport application and other travel expenses.
Upon reaching the foreign land, the reality allegedly turned out to be a plot for a dystopian sci-fi movie. The women were allegedly kept like battery hens, where they were “fed hormones, treated like cattle.”
How were the eggs harvested?
According to an alleged victim, they were pumped with hormones to stimulate their ovaries. Then, once a month, they were anaesthetised, and their eggs were collected. It is believed that the eggs were sold and trafficked to other countries for use in in-vitro fertilisation (IVF).
Diana Thomas, CEO and Founder of The World Egg and Sperm Bank told the Sun that the market is filled with eggs illegally harvested from women in Third World Countries, adding that the customers are often duped into believing that the eggs they’re getting are ethically sourced.
“It's all a lie. They're marketing to the Western market (and shown) how to amend their profile to make them look like educated white middle-class women so that people in the Western world don't feel guilty, getting eggs from poor abused women who are not educated,” Thomas said.
