Ron Harris, under fire since his model ovarian egg auction site brought him under heavy scrutiny, has shut all but one of his adult Web sites down, USA Today reports, with the one remaining now closed to members.
The paper says a notice on the open site's home page says it takes no new memberships but remains servicing current members.
Ron's Angels (www.ronsangels.com) had some seven million hits since going live a on Oct. 25, making Harris a celebrity but drawing fire from infertility experts who say the concept undermined their profession and brought blight to it. But the site also drew fire from those who believed the entire thing was a hoax aimed at luring unsuspecting customers to the Harris adult sites.
U.S. News and World Report amplifies the concerns the site raised about oversight. "We need to consider what rules we want," Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Bartolet tells the magazine, "before all this becomes so entrenched that rules can no longer be set."
USA Today says Harris began closing the erotic sites over a week ago to concentrate on the egg auction. One of the models, identified as Misty-Lee McFern, tells the paper she's been swamped by media requests since being interviewed by the paper the day the egg auction site opened.
She's asking $50,000 for her eggs, the paper says. They're still on auction, but she won't say if she's received any bids. Meanwhile, USA Today says at least four of the original eight auction models have since asked to be withdrawn because of the wave of publicity.
A fifth model received a $42,000 bid while a test version of the site was on the Web, the paper says, but she's also been pulled from the site because she did not respond to phone calls from Harris. U.S. News cited a model identified only as No. 88 and a Romanian national as listing, for her top reason for auctioning her eggs, "To move to the U.S.A." - a suggestion that at least some of the models might be exploited, the magazine says.
There were said to be at least three serious bids last week, and the Federal Trade Commission says the auction is, in fact, legal. That isn't stopping regulators, prosecutors, and lawmakers in Washington from watching it closely, USA Today says.
"What he's really looking for is people who want to buy more beautiful children," says Boston University health law professor George Annas to USA Today, in an apparent echo of critics sneering at the site as high-tech Darwinism. "Think of the terrible lives these children might lead."
