Movie
Made in India
Synopsis
In an era when so much from industrial manufacturing to technical support is being outsourced to Third World nations where labor is cheap and regulation is minimal, it's not especially surprising that certain medical practices are also subject to free-market thinking. Lisa and Brian Switzer are a couple from San Antonio, Texas who have been trying for years to have a child, with no success. They've consulted with physicians about having a baby using in vitro fertilization and a surrogate to carry the child to term, but in the United States that process costs $100,000 and up, more than they can afford. The Switzers turned to a "medical tourism" firm who can arrange for the couple to travel to India, where the same procedure can be done for $25,000. However, these treatments are not regulated by Indian medical law as they are in the United States, and Aasia, who has agreed to carry the Switzers' child, is an object lesson in the cultural and economic divide between the parties involved. Aasia, at age twenty-seven, already has three children and lives in a one-room house in a poverty-wracked section of Mumbai; while being a surrogate mother will bring some much needed money into the household, it will also earn her the enmity of her neighbors, friends and even her husband, who does not approve of his wife's decision. Filmmaker Rebecca Haimowitz and Vaishail Sinha investigate the economic, medical and ethical issues raised by medical tourism as reflected by the Switzers' case in the documentary Made In India, which received its world premiere at the 2010 Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival.
