CFP: Ethical Issues in Medical Tourism
Jeremy Snyder
International Conference on
Ethical Issues in Medical Tourism
Conference Dates: June 24-25, 2010
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Sponsored by Simon Fraser University and the Canadian Institutes of Health
Research
Medical tourism involves travel across national borders for medical
procedures such as surgeries. Low and middle income countries including
India, Thailand, and the Philippines, are actively marketing themselves as
destinations for medical tourists with high quality medical care available
without queues and at relatively low cost.
The burgeoning medical tourism industry has been advertised as creating new
opportunities for host countries and patients alike. Yet, medical tourism
raises a range of difficult ethical issues. Critics have charged that the
active development of the medical tourism industry will inevitably create a
two-tier medical system in departure and destination countries alike. Such a
system in destination countries can result in the majority of medical
resources being used to cater to foreign patients with little left for the
less privileged citizens of the destination country. Moreover, medical
tourists may face problems with continuity of care and quality of medical
treatments, in addition to the burden of having to travel abroad for medical
care.
The considerations noted above bring into question whether medical tourism
is ethically defensible and, if not, whether any reforms and regulations
would make it so. While some scholarship has begun to emerge on these
issues, more discussion is needed of the range of difficult ethical and
empirical questions surrounding medical tourism. We seek abstracts from the
fields of philosophy, ethics, law, health policy, health services, and other
disciplines that seek to answer a range of key questions: What are the
ethical issues associated with medical tourism? Who is responsible for
potential wrongdoing in medical tourism? What reforms and regulations are
needed for ethical medical tourism? Is ethical medical tourism possible?
Do reproductive and organ tourism raise special ethical issues?
The conference will feature two keynote presentations from leading experts
on medical tourism:
� Dr. Leigh Turner, Associate Professor, Center for Bioethics, School of
Public Health, and College of Pharmacy at the University of Minnesota
� Dr. George Thomas, Chief Orthopaedic Surgeon at St. Isabel�s Hospital in
Chennai, India and Editor of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics
Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words detailing your proposed
presentation. Abstracts should be submitted by email in word or pdf format
to med...@sfu.ca by April 1st, 2010. Please include the presentation title,
names and affiliations of authors, abstract, and contact details of the
presenting author with all submissions. Abstracts will be reviewed, and
those who have submitted abstracts will be notified of the outcome of the
reviews by mid-April. Those wishing to assemble panel presentation sessions
at the conference should contact the organizers directly. Additional
information about the conference will be available by mid-February at:
www.sfu.ca/medicaltourism. If you have any questions about the conference,
please contact Dr. Jeremy Snyder (jeremy...@sfu.ca) or Dr. Valorie
Crooks (cro...@sfu.ca), the organizers, directly.
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Prolonged discussions should be moved to chora: enrol via
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jodie...@gmail.com
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