Police will soon be seeking an arrest warrant for the alleged leader of a Taiwanese gang that has been luring Vietnamese women to become surrogate mothers for children to be adopted by rich foreigners.
The scam was uncovered when immigration police raided a house in Bangkok on Wednesday and rescued 13 of these women.
Meanwhile, this issue will be tabled at a meeting of the Medical Council's subpanel next Friday, where the agenda is to see if any of the doctors involved knew about the scam.
Immigration Bureau Deputy Commissioner ML Pansak Kasemsant said yesterday that victims and suspects were being interviewed so the police can build a case for the gang leader's arrest. A team from the Public Health Ministry was also sent to help with the investigation, because the case involves hospitals or personnel providing invitro fertilisation (IVF). He said one of the 13 victims had recently given birth, but her baby was at Sin Phaed Hospital with respiratory problems.
Pansak said it was not believable when several of the women said they had willingly agreed to the pregnancies. The Social Development and Human Security Ministry, meanwhile, said that this case came under the frame of human trafficking and that the victims were probably too scared to tell the truth.
Chairman of the Medical Council, Dr Amnat Kusalanan, said the agency had yet to decide if the doctors in question were wrong and if they had conspired in forcing the women to become surrogate mothers, or if the procedure had been done properly and according to the council's standards. The council's subpanel will discuss the case next Friday before it forwards it to the council for consideration as to whether it should be handed over to the ethics committee. The council will also check to see if any of the couples had paid for the pregnancy, he added.
Amnat said that though the Cabinet has passed a draft legislation about protecting children born via assisted reproductive technology, the law was still waiting for House consideration and until it is put into effect, the issue of surrogate pregnancies will come under the Medical Council's jurisdiction. Regulations say that surrogate pregnancies are only allowed when a couple's eggs and sperm is used, when the woman carrying the baby is not paid for the pregnancy and is related to one of the parents.
Meanwhile, Dr Theerasak Thamrongtheerakul, chief of Vibhavadi Hospital's Fertility Centre, said that if doctors involved had benefited from this gang, then it meant they were violating ethics of the medical profession as well as breaking the law. However, if the doctors did not have any background information and were doing their duty, then they were not breaking any rules. He said normally a hospital can help with surrogate pregnancies, but it must record it and let all parties come to an agreement as to who will be identified as the baby's mother in the birth certificate.
-The Nation/Asia News Network
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