Doctors Offer Fertility, Other Treatments as Contest Prizes
By Bob LaMendola,
Sun Sentinel
| 11. 04. 2011
Attention patients: Bring the most Internet viewers to our Facebook page and win a free … pregnancy?
Doctors and medical businesses in South Florida and nationwide are increasingly giving patients free elective medical treatment as prizes in contests — particularly on the Internet — as a new way to drum up business. Fertility doctors, dentists and cosmetic beauty centers are among those leading the way.
Health care contests aren't illegal, but they draw criticism from medical school ethics professors, who see them as taking medicine too far toward becoming solely a money-making venture.
"Reproductive surgery is not a door prize," said Kenneth Goodman, at the University of Miami.
Hollywood real estate agent Dana Portal loves the idea. She and her husband, Sylvain, entered a doctor's online contest for couples who can't get pregnant. The couple who get the most people to "like" the doctor's Facebook page by Dec. 21 win $10,000 of in vitro fertilization (IVF) therapy. Dozens have entered.
"Some people have been struggling with pregnancy for 10 to 15 years and have run out of resources, so for...
Related Articles
By Anna Collinson and Jo Adnitt, BBC | 08.18.2026
At least 30 children, most of them British, are feared to have been conceived by IVF treatment in northern Cyprus using the wrong sperm or egg donors.
In each case, the parents suspect they did not get the donors they...
By Dan Falk, Nautilus | 08.20.2026
The pseudoscience of eugenics, founded on the mistaken notion that nature envisions some “right” combination of genes, and that selective breeding can improve the human race, is making a comeback. While the heyday of eugenics was a century ago, the...
By Anna Louie Sussman, The New York Times | 08.21.2026
Since in vitro fertilization was invented nearly 50 years ago, at least 10 million children who would not otherwise exist have been brought into the world. New constellations of families — older moms, same-sex parents, single dads — have flourished...
By Jenni Fink, Newsweek | 08.19.2026
“Donald Trump” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
President Donald Trump's latest effort to limit birthright citizenship could have consequences for the international surrogacy industry, potentially affecting thousands of intended parents from overseas who travel...
