April 21, 2025

What kind of pizza do you want with your baby?

Michael Cook

Hi there,

First, a couple of self-referential issues. We have changed our commenting software to Disqus, a popular and robust add-on which is used on many big websites. It works much the same as the old system, but is easier for the moderators. The transition was relatively smooth, but I fear that a couple of comments might have been lost. I apologise if they were yours.

We have launched our six-monthly BioEdge appeal for donations. You still have a month left, so don’t panic! We do not have a big institutional donor backing us, so please think about it.

As for other matters, our stories this week cover a wide range of topics, from doctor-cide in Syria, to animal rights, to prenatal testing for autism.

But one item in my background reading that I found riveting was the blog of Rudy Rupak Acharya, the founder of a leading medical tourism company in California called Planet Hospital. Although he claimed to be a broker for procedures ranging from teeth whitening to hip replacements, surrogacy was a major part of his business.

What appalled me was how crass making babies becomes when profit supplants romance. What’s love got to do with it anyway? Here’s the raucous, pitchman voice of Rudy:

In Mexico, we have actually managed to make the costs as cheap as India when you take air, hotel, and visas into consideration. I am saddened to see this latest crap circus [a ban on gay surrogacy] come blazing out of the poop shoot of Indian bureaucracy because it ruined the plans of so many people …

A word to our competitors. Be decent and build your own opportunity but do not try to leach off of us. We have signed exclusives with our clinic already while you were trying to figure out what hit you…

We here at PlanetHospital.com will provide you with the impeccable service that many of our clients praise us for and use our experience to guide you.  We will also provide you with options in Mexico, Thailand and Panama. We understand what you need and what you are looking for and it is our pleasure to make it happen stress free, and we will even throw in a free pizza for you …

I think that Margaret Atwood could make a novel out of Rudy’s blog posts without much effort at all. Oh, and by the way, Rudy’s company has been forced into involuntary bankruptcy, with an alleged US$1 million owing to his creditors, many of them couples seeking to acquire children. No more free pizzas, guys.

Michael Cook
Fertility awareness campaigns may be backfiring
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commercialization
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