As a donor-conceived person (a person conceived using a sperm donor), I was disgusted and saddened by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority's decision last week to allow egg donors to be paid £750 per treatment cycle and sperm donors £35 per clinic visit (Egg and sperm donors to get bigger payment, 19 October). In so doing the HFEA has set the UK back on the road to the commercialisation of gamete donation.

I was conceived in the early 80s, in the bad old days before the HFEA was created, when donation was unregulated and clinics could pay donors what they liked (after the HFEA was set up, clinics were only allowed to compensate donors for reasonable expenses). Through research I have discovered donors at the clinic I was conceived at were paid £15 per donation. Did my donor care about the child he was bringing into existence or did he just want the money, which, for a medical student, would undoubtedly have come in handy? As he was anonymous it is unlikely I will ever find him and have that question answered. What I do know is, as far as I am concerned, he sold me for 15 pieces of silver – sorry, pounds – and I'm left with a big hole where a father should have been and a sense of worthlessness.

Now these feelings are to be visited on a new generation of donor-conceived people. It is only a matter of time before we have in this country a similar situation to the US, where pretty female graduates of prestigious universities can makes thousands of dollars through donating their eggs, and the idea that human beings have intrinsic value will be a distant memory.
Rachel Pepa
Leicester