Trapped in the Surrogacy Boom: Thai Women Rescued from Human Egg Farms in Georgia
        
            By Blene Woldeselasse, 
                Humans Rights Research Center
             | 02. 18. 2025
        
            HRRC condemns human trafficking and illegal trafficking in all forms. The recent rescue of three Thai women in Georgia from human egg trafficking highlights the urgent need for greater national and international security cooperation, legal protections for victims, and psycho-social services support for survivors of human trafficking.
                    
                                    
                    
                                                                                                                                    
                                                                            
                              
    
  
  
    
  
          
  
      
    
            Three Thai women have been rescued from a human egg trafficking operation in Georgia, run by a Chinese human trafficking syndicate. One of the victims, speaking anonymously at a press conference, revealed how she was deceived by an online job advertisement promising lucrative surrogacy work. The offer included a monthly salary of 25,000 Thai baht ($742.94 U.S.) and an all-expenses-paid trip to Georgia to help childless couples.
However, upon arrival, the women’s passports were confiscated, and they were told they were in the country illegally and would face arrest if they tried to leave. They were confined to group homes with several other Thai women and injected with hormones to stimulate egg production. Their harvested eggs were then allegedly sold and trafficked for in-vitro fertilization (IVF) purposes.
The operation was exposed when one of the victims managed to secure her release by paying a ransom of 70,000 baht ($2,053 U.S.). Upon returning to Thailand, she alerted The Pavena Hongsakul Foundation for Children and Women, a local NGO, which then informed Thai authorities. A coordinated rescue effort involving Interpol...
 
       
 
  
 
    
    
  
   
                        
                                                                                
                 
                                                    
                            
                                  
    
  
  
      Related Articles
    
  
          
  
  
  
  
  
  
      
            
                  
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Abby McCloskey,  The Dallas Morning News | 10.10.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            We Texans like to do things our way — leave some hide on the fence rather than stay corralled, as goes a line in Wallace O. Chariton’s Texas dictionary This Dog’ll Hunt. Lately, I’ve been wondering what this ethos...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
    
    
            Paula Amato & Shoukhrat Mitalipov
[OHSU News/Christine Torres Hicks]
On September 30th, a team of 21 scientists from Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) published a significant paper in Nature Communications, with a scientifically accurate but, to many, somewhat abstruse headline:
Induction of experimental cell division to generate cells with reduced chromosome ploidy
The lead authors were Shoukhrat Mitalipov, recently described here as “a push-the-envelope biologist,” and his long-term colleague Paula Amato. (Recall that in July the pair had co-published with...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Julia Black,  MIT Technology Review | 10.16.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            Consider, if you will, the translucent blob in the eye of a microscope: a human blastocyst, the biological specimen that emerges just five days or so after a fateful encounter between egg and sperm. This bundle of cells, about the size of...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Lizzy Lawrence,  Stat News | 10.14.2025