GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: Destination Laos: the ever-changing surrogacy business changes again

domingo, 15 de enero de 2017

BioEdge: Destination Laos: the ever-changing surrogacy business changes again

BioEdge: Destination Laos: the ever-changing surrogacy business changes again
Bioedge

Destination Laos: the ever-changing surrogacy business changes again

by Michael Cook | 14 Jan 2017 | 1 comment

The dreary design of the website and Facebook page of Find Surrogate Mother (aka surrogacy inc) makes depressing reading. The business describes itself as “a full service Surrogacy Agency in Manila, Philippines, helping to match Surrogate Mothers, Intended Parents, Egg Donors, Sperm Donors [which] provide[s] services for Heterosexual Couple, Gay Couple, Lesbian Couple, Single Woman, Single Man.”
For desperately poor Filipino women, it must seem like a golden opportunity.
Unfortunately for them, the Filipino government is cracking down on what it describes as a "human trafficking syndicate". It detained four women on New Year’s Day as they were about to leave Manila for Phnom Penh, there to be impregnated with the sperm of men from Australia, Germany, China and Nigeria. They were to be paid US$10,000.
Philippine Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente said the police had uncovered "a new modus operandi of a human trafficking syndicate that preys on our Filipino women who are enticed to bear children of strangers for a fee because of their poverty".
Surrogacy for foreign clients is officially illegal in Cambodia, but surrogacy brokers are still active there, according to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald.
The incident shows just how flexible the surrogacy industry is. Only months after surrogacy clinics for foreigners were closed in India, Thailand, and Sri Lanka, they opened in Phnom Penh. According to the Herald, “The operators look for poor, lightly regulated countries that don't have laws dealing directly with surrogacy, such as Cambodia.”
With the crackdown in Cambodia, the operators are simply shifting their business to Laos. One surrogacy agency operating there, Families Through Surrogacy, describes Laos in less than flattering terms: “a one-party socialist republic [which] espouses Marxism and is governed by a single party communist politburo dominated by military generals”. It is “one of the most corrupt countries in the world” which has “created major problems with the rule of law, including the nation’s ability to enforce contract and business regulation”.
No wonder that surrogacy businesses are flocking there.

Transplant surgeons in Belgium and the Netherlands are already harvesting organs from patients who have requested euthanasia. Could this happen in Canada, the new kid on the euthanasia block? Perhaps. In a recent article in the Journal of Medical Ethics, two bioethicists from Quebec argue that organ donor euthanasia is a homage to autonomy and needs to be legalised. Apparently the Quebec government and the society of transplant surgeons in Quebec are also on board.

Of all the bad ideas associated with euthanasia, this must be one of the worst. The potential for exploiting vulnerable people is immense. Imagine that you are a quadriplegic. Your organs are healthy; you are lonely, frustrated, discouraged. You see a TV program in which a doctor praises the unforgettable generosity of So-and-so whose life was not worth living but found a way to give life to others, etc, etc. Wouldn't you think of ringing up the doctor and asking him how to go about it?

Will Canada be able to stop this from happening?