Working for a client who produces baby food – means that we’re always on the look out for baby related strories and initiatives that might be a media opportunity for the BabyDeli brand. Childhood obesity usually tops the list, but this week it was the launch of a Baby Lottery that caught our attention.

A human egg is being given away this week to a woman plucked from the audience at a fertility seminar. The ‘lottery’ winner is to receive £13,000 worth of IVF treatment and is set to link US based IVF clinics and British clinics in an order to sidestep strict UK payment and guidance laws.

Anti-IVF payment for profit regulations mean a British donor can expect to get £250 for her eggs and supplies are drying up. US donors however are paid up to £6,000 a time and therefore, unsurprisingly, up to 500 students a month donate eggs in order to help pay for their education.

Consultants at the London Bridge Centre and IVF Institute in Fairfax, Virginia, are hoping Wednesday’s event will start a transatlantic trade to help with the lack of donors in England and believe that this lottery style event will attract people as it does in consumer driven America.

This randomly picked winner will not only get the egg but will be able to leaf through profiles of donors, who are generally pretty, university educated young women and then choose who they would like to donate an egg to them.

It’s apparent that there is a need to increase the number of eggs donated in Britain, but creating a “win a baby” competition can’t be the way.

As a PR professional operating in the baby market, I understand that organisations have a responsibility to market their products in the right way. As a woman I can understand the desperation couples feel when they want a child and simply can’t have one. As an auntie i understand the joy that a little girl or boy brings to a family. But as a human being, i can only ask the question . . .  How do you tell a child that he/she was the prize in a lucky dip?