GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: How well are Indian surrogates treated?

domingo, 2 de octubre de 2016

BioEdge: How well are Indian surrogates treated?

BioEdge: How well are Indian surrogates treated?

Bioedge

How well are Indian surrogates treated?

by Michael Cook | 1 Oct 2016 |

Isha Devi, a 30-year-old surrogate mother in New Delhi / Julie McCarthy/NPR

A dramatic report from NPR highlights exploitation in India’s surrogacy industry. The government has banned all foreign surrogacy, but doctors counter that this forces women to give up a chance to make money.

"Pregnancy is not a big deal for them," says Dr Anoop Gupta, the head of a major fertility clinic in New Delhi. He told NPR that he looks for "simple" women. Once he made the mistake of engaging an educated engineer who gave him nothing but headaches.

"Even if they don't [participate in] surrogacy, they will get pregnant themselves," he says. "They do not use contraception. So they get pregnant, pregnant, pregnant! That's it! They are thoughtless people. Now if they get an opportunity to help somebody who is childless, and they help themselves with the money they can never think of in their lifetime — nobody has been exploited."

Amongst the critics is Manasi Mishra, of the Research Division at the Centre for Social Research in New Delhi. In her opinion, the surrogacy industry is "run by haves, to exploit the have-nots." In short, she says, "This pregnancy is precious, the mother is not."

After studying about 200 cases, Ms Mishra found a number of problems

Women who were never paid.
Women who were promised a natural birth but were given a Caesarean.
Some couples commissioned more than one surrogate to guarantee a pregnancy. The unwanted baby was aborted chemically – and the woman thoguht that she had had a miscarriage.

Mishra told NPR that one doctor "had the audacity to tell me that in a country where we have a high fertility rate" and where women abort unwanted pregnancies, where is the harm in "surrogacy arrangements?"

"We cannot do that in a civilized society," she says.

- See more at: http://www.bioedge.org/bioethics/how-well-are-indian-surrogates-treated/12022#sthash.SvQtBKSq.dpuf

Bioedge

Yes, the American president is the most powerful man in the world. Yes, he has the launch codes. But there is something unhealthy in the preoccupation of the world’s media with the US presidential campaign at the expense of other world crises.

Donald Trump, who must be the worst major party candidate ever, seems to have incited violence at some of his rallies and has even made vague threats to Hillary Clinton. If you Google “Trump violence”, you will get 82,700,000 results. It’s a live issue, at least in the media.

Google “Duterte violence” and you will get only 971,000 results – about 1% of the figures for Trump. But Mr Duterte has incited thugs, vigilantes and police to kill drug dealers and since he took office on June 30. The Filipino president now has the blood of 3,500 of his own countrymen on his hands. And he is not a buffoon running for President. He is the President.

But it could get worse. This week he cheerfully compared himself to Hitler. “Hitler massacred three million Jews ... there’s three million drug addicts. There are. I’d be happy to slaughter them,” he told a press conference. “You know my victims. I would like (them) to be all criminals to finish the problem of my country and save the next generation from perdition.”

The number of murders in July, August and September is more or less equivalent to the number of civilians killed in Syria. Why doesn’t the world care? It’s probably because Duterte’s victims are drug addicts and dealers. Even if they are, they have a right to life and a right to justice. They are human beings; they are not scum.

The world is demanding the removal of Syria’s President Assad because of the atrocities committed by his regime. It’s time that world leaders called for the removal of President Duterte.