Canada: the latest surrogacy hotspot?
by Xavier Symons | 5 Oct 2018 | 1 comment
Canada may have become a hotspot for international surrogacy, with data suggesting that almost half of intended parents in some provinces live abroad.
Writing in The Globe and Mail, journalist Alison Motluck recounts how loopholes in Canada’s surrogacy law, and increasing restrictions on surrogacy in other countries, have contributed to an apparent spike in foreign intending parents having children via Canadian surrogates.
Precise figures are not publicly available and some provinces do not keep records of parents’ residency. Yet legal scholar Pamela White from the University of Kent recently obtained data from the government of British Columbia of births via surrogacy in the province in 2016 to 2017. According to White, almost half of the babies born to Canadian surrogates in the province were for intended parents who lived outside the country (45 of the 102 babies, or 44 per cent).
In a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Fertility & Andrology Society last month, University of Manitoba legal scholar Karen Bubsy noted that a loophole in Canadian legislation allows for surrogates to be paid provided that the money exchanges hands outside of the country. And unlike Russia and the Ukraine, Canada does not restrict surrogacy on the basis of marital status or sexual orientation.
Canada restricts payments for local sperm and eggs, yet prospective parents can purchase gametes for surrogacy in US states bordering Canada.
Even in light of the loopholes in legislation, there have been calls for the country’s official ban on commercial surrogacy to be abandoned. A bill is currently before the House of Commons that would amend the Assisted Human Reproduction Act to allow payment for surrogacy services.
Sunday, October 7, 2018
About five minutes before I was about to entrust this newsletter to MailChimp, I heard that the Canadian Medical Association had just withdrawn from the World Medical Association after the WMA's annual meeting in Reykjavík.
The CMA said that the trigger for this dramatic turn of events was the highly unethical behaviour of the incoming president of the WMA, Dr Leonid Eidelman. It accused Dr Eidelman of plagiarism. This was true and not very smart. A few sentences in Dr Eidelman’s inaugural address to the assembly had been lifted from the inaugural address of a former president of the CMA, Dr Chris Simpson. Since Dr Simpson was one of the CMA’s delegates in Reykjavík, it was highly unlikely that this would go unnoticed. Apparently other passages had also been copied from “various websites, blogs and news articles, without appropriate attribution to the authors”.
"As an organization that holds itself as the arbiter of medical ethics at the global level, the WMA has failed to uphold its own standards,” said Dr Gigi Osler, the current CMA president. “The CMA cannot, in all good conscience, continue to be a member of such an organization.”
The WMA Council and the Assembly accepted an apology from Dr Eidelman. He said that he had relied upon speechwriters – a plausible excuse, as he is a Latvian who emigrated to Israel and who speaks English with a heavy accent.
This is not the first time that a WMA president has been accused of moral failings. The immediate past president, Dr Ketan Desai, was elected while facing criminal charges for corruption in India. At the time, medical ethicist Art Caplan urged the WMA to ditch him as morally compromised. It didn’t.
So the Canadians’ reaction seems disproportionate. It is more likely that it was prompted by the WMA’s firm opposition to euthanasia, which the CMA vigorously supports. One of the CMA delegates, Dr Jeff Blackmer, posted a bitter tweet about the irony that an unethical plagiarist had once openly criticised him for being unethical in backing euthanasia.
No doubt euthanasia will continue to split the medical profession. Any comments from readers?
The CMA said that the trigger for this dramatic turn of events was the highly unethical behaviour of the incoming president of the WMA, Dr Leonid Eidelman. It accused Dr Eidelman of plagiarism. This was true and not very smart. A few sentences in Dr Eidelman’s inaugural address to the assembly had been lifted from the inaugural address of a former president of the CMA, Dr Chris Simpson. Since Dr Simpson was one of the CMA’s delegates in Reykjavík, it was highly unlikely that this would go unnoticed. Apparently other passages had also been copied from “various websites, blogs and news articles, without appropriate attribution to the authors”.
"As an organization that holds itself as the arbiter of medical ethics at the global level, the WMA has failed to uphold its own standards,” said Dr Gigi Osler, the current CMA president. “The CMA cannot, in all good conscience, continue to be a member of such an organization.”
The WMA Council and the Assembly accepted an apology from Dr Eidelman. He said that he had relied upon speechwriters – a plausible excuse, as he is a Latvian who emigrated to Israel and who speaks English with a heavy accent.
This is not the first time that a WMA president has been accused of moral failings. The immediate past president, Dr Ketan Desai, was elected while facing criminal charges for corruption in India. At the time, medical ethicist Art Caplan urged the WMA to ditch him as morally compromised. It didn’t.
So the Canadians’ reaction seems disproportionate. It is more likely that it was prompted by the WMA’s firm opposition to euthanasia, which the CMA vigorously supports. One of the CMA delegates, Dr Jeff Blackmer, posted a bitter tweet about the irony that an unethical plagiarist had once openly criticised him for being unethical in backing euthanasia.
No doubt euthanasia will continue to split the medical profession. Any comments from readers?
 Michael Cook Editor BioEdge |  |  |  |
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Data suggests that almost half of intending parents live abroad. BioEdge
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