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Commercialization
Big business cashing in on reproductive services boom
Xavier Symons | 25 May 2013 |
The cliché “bundles of joy” has two meanings in the assisted reproduction industry: babies and cash. Keen businessmen are scrambling to take advantage of this burgeoning area of the health sector.
Why not buy and sell embryos, ask scholars in NEJM
Michael Cook | 20 April 2013 |
Why can’t embryos be bought and sold like any other commodity? Making this unsettling proposal is less surprising than where it was made – in the America’s leading medical journal, the New England Journal of Medicine.
Surrogate refuses $10,000 to abort child
Xavier Symons | 07 March 2013 |
A Connecticut couple offered their surrogate mother US$10,000 to abort their baby because it had major defects.
One thing is the theory. Another is real life.
Michael Cook | 01 December 2012 |
Former bioethics student involved in insider trading scandal
Ethics debate over “cheap” embryos
Jared Yee | 23 November 2012 |
Dr Ernest Zeringue, a California-based fertility specialist, has found a way to overcome the most common obstacle between prospective IVF parents and their offspring -- the high price.
Surrogacy, now big business in southern California
Michael Cook | 20 October 2012 |
Conceptual Options is a surrogacy agency in “the surrogacy friendly state of California”. This is a promotional video it is using for gay couples.
“A major evolutionary leap for women”: celebrity sperm donation in UK
Michael Cook | 20 October 2012 |
Yesterday a British entrepreneur launched a celebrity sperm donor service.
Danish donor passes on severe defect
Michael Cook | 26 September 2012 |
So much for careful monitoring of sperm donation from Danish “Vikings”. A man, known only as “donor 7042” fathered dozens of children at Copenhagen's Nordisk Cryobank clinic and passed on to some of them a severe genetic disorder.
“I found my embryos on Craigslist”
Michael Cook | 12 May 2012 |
Two couples, in Chicago and Florida, found their embryos through a Craigslist discussion group from an Iowa couple who had 18 spare embryos. Deb and Kevin McCrea gave 9 to each couple for free, saving them thousands of dollars in IVF treatment.
Is there a limit to the wisdom of the market?
Michael Cook | 28 April 2012 |
Why can you sell sperm but not your vote? These conundrums are investigated by Michael Sandel, of Harvard University, in his latest book, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. It is sure to become a reference point in future bioethics debates.
“Offensive” and “misleading” cosmetic surgery advertising under attack
Michael Cook | 17 March 2012 |
Several prominent feminists and cosmetic surgeons have published a letter in the Guardian (UK) calling for a ban on cosmetic surgery advertising.
A new industry – fertility finance
Jared Yee | 10 March 2012 |
Julie Barth, was over the moon when her doctor told her she might be able to get pregnant via IVF. But the Illinois doctor didn’t stop there – he referred her to a “fertility finance” company which lent her US$5,000 at an interest rate of 7.99% to help pay for the $24,000 procedure. The case reveals a new trend in the commercialisation of fertility.
Leading UK surgeons call for ban on cosmetic surgery advertising
Jared Yee | 28 January 2012 |
Leading plastic surgeons in the UK have responded to the current crisis in cosmetic surgery by calling for a ban on advertisements for all types of cosmetic surgery, including breast enlargements and tummy tucks. They say the industry is an under-regulated “wild west”.
We are healers, not “providers”, US physicians protest
Michael Cook | 15 October 2011 |
“Customer,” “consumer,” and “provider” are words that do not belong in teaching rounds and the clinic, two Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center physicians, Pamela Hartzband and Jerome Groopman write in a stinging attack on the “industrialization” of medicine in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Trapiantiamo la felicità: we transplant happiness!
Michael Cook | 15 October 2011 |
Organ donors need compensation, says UK bioethics think tank
Michael Cook | 15 October 2011 |
Organ donors should have their funerals subsidised and women who donate their eggs for research should be paid, says an influential British bioethics think tank. In a new report, “Human bodies: donation for medicine and research”, the Nuffield Council for Bioethics argues that altruism should remain at the heart of organ and tissue donation -- but people do respond more readily to financial incentives.
Radio station condemned for IVF giveaway
Jared Yee | 23 September 2011 |
A Canadian radio station has been denounced as “unethical” and “insulting” for hosting a “win-a-baby” competition Ottawa’s Hot 89.9 promised to fund three cycles of IVF to the listener who makes the best case in 100 words or less.
And the first prize is… IVF!
Michael Cook | 09 July 2011 |
A British non-profit is touting a raffle whose prize is IVF treatment at one of London’s five best IVF clinics. To Hatch, a new charity founded by Camille Strachan last year, is selling tickets for £20. The IVF treatment is will be worth £25,000. The competition is open to single, gay and older people as well as couples and will be held on September 18.
The ride of your life, er, death
Michael Cook | 30 April 2011 |
US women join class-action lawsuit demanding more money for eggs
Michael Cook | 16 April 2011 |
Thousands of women across the United States have joined a class-action suit demanding better compensation for egg donors. The case was lodged this week in San Francisco by two firms, Finkelstein Thompson and Cafferty Faucher. It claims that the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology and the San Francisco-based Pacific Fertility Center engaged in anti-competitive behaviour to fix the price paid to egg donors.
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