Talk:Medical tourism

VFD discussion

Medical tourism

• Delete. Medical tourism is a reason for travel, not a way of travel. It would be silly to have an "Ink toner travel" article that made suggestions about where on the planet you should go to make deals to get supplies of ink toner. We shouldn't recommend places for non-emergency medical treatment. Secondly, I think the entire issue of non-urgent medical treatment exceeds the scope of our goals. Medical decisions can easily cost lives and we should not involve ourselves in this topic. Given the serious amounts of money involved in this sub-industry, policing ourselves against touts (or even detecting which ones are touts) is just way more effort than it's worth. Let's declare this subject Not Our Problem. -- (WT-en) Colin 03:07, 16 July 2008 (EDT)

• Delete. I agree with Colin's statements above. I think this belongs in the same category as sex tourism and we should not carry detailed information about the topic. There are many other places on the web where people can find this kind of information if they really want. No need to have it here. --(WT-en) Nick 03:38, 16 July 2008 (EDT)

• Delete. (WT-en) OldPine 07:07, 16 July 2008 (EDT)

• Keep This article is well balanced presenting both the possible benefits and drawbacks of medical tourism. It certainly doesn't "tout" anything. What I think it could benefit from are some contributions from people who actually have travelled abroad for medical care -- someone who actually has underwent a procedure such as LASIK surgery, for example, could probably add some useful comments about how they made a decision to seek treatment overseas. Among the expat community getting medical care outside of one's home country is quite common. Also I don't think this has anything to do with sex tourism so why make the comparison.(WT-en) SONORAMA 11:11, 16 July 2008 (EDT)
  • Just to clarify -- I'm not saying the existing article touts. What I am saying is that if someone adds a clinic in Tijuana that sounds reasonable but is a tout, it will be too hard to detect the problem. It's not like a Bar where one can visit it and immediately say this sucks and then delete it from Wikivoyage. -- (WT-en) Colin 15:53, 16 July 2008 (EDT)

• Delete. Per Colin's reasoning, definitely agree – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 01:52, 17 July 2008 (EDT)

• A Proposal Colin's doubts on the topic seem to be that anything medical-related is beyond the scope of Wikivoyage and the potential harm that could come if someone took bad advice from an article. In other words, the issue is not with the article itself, but rather with what potentially links to it. I say "potentially" because as of right now the article has no links whatsoever.

So my proposal is this. Similar to Wikivoyage's policy against links to hotel aggregator booking sites, let's make a policy against recommending specific doctors or clinics in medical tourism articles. Instead, appropriate links to provide might be: Links to the local-country medical association or credentialing body, links to hotels and inns that specialize in recuperative stays for medical tourism patients (such places do exist) and also links to US based international medical accreditors such as the Joint Commission International[1] Medical tourism is a huge and growing trend, and since many travelers come to Wikivoyage first for information, it is important that we include information about this aspect of travel here. (WT-en) SONORAMA 20:32, 20 July 2008 (EDT)

I'd be okay with the general discussion and medical association stuff. It wouldn't really work to link to hotels and inns since they tend to be associated with specific physicians that we really can't vouch for. So in other words, I'd be okay with a policy where we never link to a medical service provider of any sort. -- (WT-en) Colin 22:49, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

• Keep I agree with User:(WT-en) Borndistinction as of course wikivoyage aims to be a guide, this article is very informative and useful to those choosing a destination for Medical Tourism. The article contains all that an individual would like to consider before travelling to the country for his/her treatment.

• Keep. Well! Of course nowadays Medical tourism is so popular that most of the travel related websites do contain information about Medical tourism so why not wikivoyage too? Although the article needs to be plunge forward, this could be a very usable one. (WT-en) Barracuda 12:55, 22 July 2008 (EDT)

• Keep. I agree with Colin: medical tourism is a big topic and definitely in scope, but we should keep it high-level, in the same way as we already do in the scuba diving articles: talk about the diving itself, not the operators (and certainly not the individual divemasters). However, large hospitals should still continue to be listed in city articles, the way we list them today. (WT-en) Jpatokal 04:05, 23 July 2008 (EDT)

• Keep Obviously. (WT-en) Pashley 19:02, 23 July 2008 (EDT)

• Keep. Medical Tourism is huge these days and if Wikivoyage aspires to be the definitive online travel guide it is something we should be trying to cover. (WT-en) Jpatokal's point about keeping it high level is something I would agree with. (WT-en) Tarr3n 08:22, 24 July 2008 (EDT)

• Keep, seems to be a valid travel topic. Agree with keeping it high-level as mentioned above. (WT-en) JYolkowski 21:55, 24 July 2008 (EDT)

Quick question—don't we have a disclaimer somewhere absolving Wikivoyage & contributors from lawsuits deriving from harm arising from following Wikivoyage advice? I can't seem to find that anywhere. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 01:57, 25 July 2008 (EDT)

I just happened across it in Wikivoyage:Copyleft#Things for users to know, and remembered reading this query back here. Perhaps there should be a link titled Disclaimer on the Main Page that links to it? (WT-en) Tarr3n 05:53, 25 July 2008 (EDT)

Sorry to have wandered off topic on the vfd page, but that seems like a good idea to me. I'll copy this discussion to Talk:Main Page. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 01:01, 17 August 2008 (EDT)

• Keep but rework before writing more articles on this subject. I'm very hesitant with this article. Per our policies/practices on travel topics, I don't understand what the rationale would be for deleting it—it is a valid way of travel, like tourism, business, studying, and other forms of travel that Wikivoyage aims to serve. To respond to the above deletion arguments: 1) Colin's point about "reason" for travel and "way" of travel is well taken, and the existing article might not be the best format to go forward with this, but I'm also hesitant to rule out the subject altogether, since we aim to serve all travelers; 2) the gravity of medical decisions is a good reason to tread lightly on the subject, but I'm not convinced it's a sufficient reason to avoid the subject; 3) As I understand it, we somewhat riskily ruled out sex tourism for subjective reasons—we don't like it (I agree)—but I don't see a pressing moral reason to avoid talking about medical tourism.
  
  But like others have said, I'm very unsure that we could successfully provide reliable advice about which medical services to use, and this is a way more serious matter than which restaurants or hotels a traveler should patronize. I agree that, at least for the time being, we should keep this strictly to a "meta" discussion of the subject. I'm not convinced that we are yet doing a great job of even that, so lets try and nail that down before wading further into treacherous terrain. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 01:15, 17 August 2008 (EDT)

OK, if we're keeping, can someone do the rework soon? I suspect as soon as that vfd tag is removed it will sit as-is for ages – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 01:35, 23 August 2008 (EDT)

Later

Looks like Cacahuate was not far wrong. Checking history, five edits in 2010, four so far this year. Looking at the article, I'd say it still needs work. Any volunteers? (WT-en) Pashley 01:20, 12 August 2011 (EDT)

Disclaimer

It was suggested above that this article might need a disclaimer to protect site & contributors from possible lawsuits. I've just added something, but am not at all certain I got it right, so I'd encourage anyone who can to improve it.

Is this something where we need an opinion, or even specific wording, from WMF legal? Pashley (talk) 13:49, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Links to drugs online

I removed a link for buying drugs online.

Such a link violates policy and I see no discussion on having this article as a special case. There is also no evidence in the article that this web site is more reputable than any that a web search would turn up.

We might suggest the option of buying drugs online from overseas where that is viable, but I suppose we are no experts on where to find reliable providers, and there are lots of unscrupulous ones around.

--LPfi (talk) 14:54, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Walking vendors

Do we promise too much?

"the same guys have items with obviously bogus Rolex and Rayban labels, so buying drugs from them may be quite risky, but they are cheap (under a dollar a pill if you bargain well) and they do work."

If they do work (i.e. are the real thing), where's the risk? Can we really promise they are not bogus too?

--LPfi (talk) 19:24, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Travel for abortion

I see that abortion is already mentioned on the topic of medical tourism, but is considered very insignificant, I think? In light of the Supreme Court of the United States overturning what has been considered, for the last 50 years, to be a constitutional right for American women to obtain abortion, it is obvious that the topic of travel to obtain an abortion will become much more important for many. Example: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/20/a-texas-teen-agers-abortion-odyssey

How does this impact wikivoyage? Just for starters:

• Since abortion rights are now defined differently in each state in the United States, travel between states will increase for those seeking abortions
• Border countries such as Canada and Mexico (and possibly other North & central American locations) will see a lot more demand for abortion services, with associated travel issues.

Anyone here interested in talking about this topic? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 18:32, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

I made a bit of an edit. I suppose in Europe, a prime case would be Poles taking a trip to some neighboring country. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:03, 30 June 2022 (UTC)