Transcript of 100 Women Kept as Slaves in “Human Egg Farm” For Egg Harvesting

It's a place called Barrasca. The story starts like this. It's a long story, but one that you've never heard before. It's about a place that dwells in the mountains. It's a place where really bad things happen. You may think that you know all the bad things. You may think you've got it all figured out, but you don't, because the truth of the story is worse than Monsters are Men. This is the starting of the story of Barrasca. It's about a 12-year-old boy by the name of Sam and his entire family, they're moving to the Ozarks. This is a real place. There's a whole TV show based off of it. It's in the US. This is naturally the perfect ominous setting for a mystery. It's beautiful. Don't get me wrong. I've never been, but just looking at pictures and videos of the Ozarks, you've got the types of riverways, the picturesque types of rivers where they're calm enough and wide enough that you can ride your little boat through it, and it's curvy. It's It's like an F1 trail. On sides of the river, it's just these mountainous landscapes with all these tall trees, and you feel like you can turn left, and there's more river, there's more trees, and it's absolutely beautiful.

The Ozarks even have these maze-like underground caves that you can explore and visit.

What state is it in?

It's part of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. It's massive. It's like a huge landscape. Now, it's a place filled with a lot of history. A lot of stories come out of the Ozarks, and a lot of them are oddly mysterious. I think by daytime, it's a dream destination. You want to be there at all hours that the sun is up. But the second that the sun sets, maybe I'm just a scaredy cat. I think that I would not want to be outside alone by myself. Sam and his family are moving to the Ozarks. Sam's dad, he just got transferred to the Sheriff's office in a small town there. And as much as everyone in the family seems to be adjusting well. Whitney, the 14-year-old daughter. So it's 12-year-old Sam and Whitney, the 14-year-old daughter. Whitney is not having a good time. She's like, I miss my freaking friends. What the fuck are we doing in the Ozarks? What even is here? I don't care about the underground caves. But that is not Sam's responsibility. Sam, he's making friends. He's going on hikes. Which speaking of, hey, why do they call this trail Westrim Prescott Or Trail?

He's asking his new friends that. Why are there so many He trails around here named Prescott. Is this mountain called Prescott or something? His new friends are giggling. Wait, what's so funny? I don't get it. It's not named after a mountain. Everything is named after the Prescott. The family that lives on that giant estate on Fairmont, they practically run everything in this town. Mr. Prescott and his son, Jimmy, own half of the businesses here. Yeah, but they don't own Gamestop, do they? Then it doesn't really matter. It doesn't really count. Sam's friends, they take him to the top of the tree house on this hike, and they have him carve his name on the back of the tree with a pocket knife. There's a bunch of other kids' names just carved into the trunk of the tree, and they instruct him. Now say, Underneath the triple tree, there is a man who waits for me. And she Should I go or should I stay? My fate's the same either way. Sam looks so confused. That's so creepy. What does that even mean? I don't know. It's just a tradition. It's bad luck if you don't do it.

Unceremoniously, Sam repeats after them. They sit on the top of the mountain. They're sharing these cans of lukewarm, disgusting beer. They're gagging, but they're hiding it because they're 12 and trying to be cool. Don't do this at home. And Sam is perking up. Wait, what is that? Did you hear that? Did you guys hear that? It sounds like this loud, metallic, grinding noise. For 10 minutes, the sound is piercing into their brains before it finally stops. It's so much louder on the mountains than it is in the town. It feels like inside At the mountain, there's something giant, like a giant metal wheel scraping against the insides of the mountain. Sam's new friends tell him, I mean, it's technically nothing. What do you mean technically? Barrasca. That's what we call it. It's a place in the woods where bad things happen. We don't really know where it is. That is so vague. What? Bad things, okay? Don't try to find out or else bad things will happen to you. It is so ominous. What is it seem like everyone in this town seems to just accept this as a fact. Imagine a random, mysterious noise overtaking your town for years at a time, and you're just like, Oh, don't worry about it.

Bad things happen there. And why don't they just tell Sam so he can stop being so curious? Sam asks his dad later that night because he works for the Sheriff's office. He's like, If anybody knows what's going on, it's probably the Sheriff's office. But everything in this new town is creepy, and he's trying to bring it up to his dad, and the dad is like, Don't even think about it. Truly, nothing is happening. You're just a little bit freaked out. Everything seems creepy. Even the kids at school bring up that there used to be these mimes. You know this whole town used to be based off of the mimes? It's not actually the Prescots. Sam is wondering, Did the Prescots get rich off of the mines? No, they came after. They opened up all the businesses. The mimes were really bad. They didn't find much down there, but recently they closed it shut because apparently some kids got into them, and a while back, they died. And by reason, I mean, I don't know, generations ago. Yeah, the city blew him up and controlled plans so that they can't go inside anymore. Another kid leans over and tells Sam, They messed up, though.

That's what I heard from my grandma. I heard they blew up the water table or poisoned it or something like that. Sam wonders if that means all the water in the town has C4 in it and we can just all explode. And all of his friends, his new friends, they're making fun of him. They're poking fun. Yet we're all just bound to combust at any moment. I believe so. You guys are so dumb. That day, after school, Sam's mom picks him up, and by dinner, there are police cars surrounding the house. He thinks it's dad. No, your dad is fine, Sam. Then what's going on, mom? Whitney, your sister never made it to school this morning. Sam's sister, Whitney, goes missing, and nothing will ever be the same after that. Even years later, by the time that Sam is finishing up sophomore year of high school, he's working sandwich shop that's owned by the Prescots, but managed by this woman named Mira, who's struggling with infertility. And life feels normal, but nothing is normal. Whitney hasn't been found in years, and one can only imagine that something really bad has happened to her. What if Barrasca has her or whatever his friends are talking about?

Whitney isn't even the only one in town that's gone missing. A lot of other girls her age has gone missing. For a small town, the numbers don't make sense. And why are none of the adults even taking it that seriously? Really. One of Sam's friends say, You know, sometimes when I'm high, I can see them all, the missing people, and I feel like I can see the answer. I know what happened. I feel like I'm so close to solving it. They're all part of this puzzle, and I put the pieces together and it makes sense, but I can't tell what the picture is of the puzzle. I don't know, dude. It just feels like everyone in this town is drinking some fucking Kool-Aid. For the next few years, Sam and his friends decide they're They're going to figure out what happened to the missing girls. They keep going up and down the mountain. They feel like the source of that grinding metal noise is going to be something. It has to be. It's got to be a piece of the puzzle. And that is when they find hidden deep inside the mountain is a facility.

This is where the girls are being taken and trapped in the mountains. The missing girls are strapped to the beds. They're sedated. They're being assayed, and many of them are pregnant. It's a baby farm. The water in the town was tainted by the mind destruction, which leaked chemicals into the water, causing mass infertility. So now when newcomers come into town, their young daughters are kidnapped, brought into the mountains, and forced to have children. These children then get sent to families in the town to pretend to be their own. And this is all run by the Prescott family. When the captives are no longer useful, they get sent to the shiny gentleman. That noise you hear, that's a metal meat grinder that grinds women up after their bodies are used. Barasca is a human baby farm. But this is not real because this is a phenomenally written story. On Reddit, it was part of the No Sleep. There's a whole podcast about it now. But there's no such thing as a human baby farm. That's way too much like Handmaid's Tale. It's fake. Until February third of 2025, three women were rescued, three Thai women, from a human egg farm, where they say that they were held captive, forced to be injected with hormones and had their eggs extracted forcibly without their consent from their bodies.

So now people are wondering, where are they taking the eggs? Who's buying the eggs? And what happens if these women run out of eggs to give? This is the case that has been dubbed the Human Egg Farm. We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mingo to support Friends of Thai daughters. They are a nonprofit working to prevent child trafficking in Southeast Asia through intensive comprehensive and long-term education and support. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mingo's growing team, and we'd also like to thank you guys for your continued support. As always, full show notes are available at Rotten Mingo today's case involves mentions of fertility struggles, loss of reproductive autonomy, and human trafficking, so please take care of yourself. A quick disclaimer. I think that I am always advocating for ways for people who are unable to conceive to find ways to start a family. I think it's one of the most beautiful things to have children and to raise them to be thoughtful, intelligent adults that are part of society. And I think there are a lot of parents out there that clearly do not deserve to be parents.

They should not be parents. Just look at any of the past few videos this month. Then there are a lot of people who desperately want to be parents. And I think if given the chance, they would raise some of the most incredible people in society. And I think those people should have the right to fight for that chance. In fact, I think it should be more affordable and easier for them to become parents. One of our closest family members went through IVF to become a parent. This is not a think piece or an opinion on IVF as a whole the fertility industry as a whole, or even surrogacy for that matter. This episode is purely about human trafficking and why there might be a demand for human egg donors that would incentivize very evil people to do something like this. Also, this case takes place in the country of Georgia, which is situated at the intersection of Eastern Europe and West Asia. This is not happening in the state of Georgia in the US, at least not that we know of. Not that it would matter, though, if it's happening in the United States or not, it's still a matter that should concern everyone.

But just to clarify from the get-go. With that being said, let's get started. It's not exactly what you expect to see on the way to world religions class, which is a random class, but there's a group of people standing in the hallway staring at this piece of paper on the wall. At the top, there's this picture of three people's legs. You don't even see their torseos or even their heads. But it is very clear that you're dealing with two adults and a small, tiny little baby learning how to walk. That's what it looks like, like a little family photo, but chopped just below the knees. The first line reads, Why become an egg donor? Have the chance to give the most precious of gifts to a loving couple in need, the gift of life. Earn between 6,000 $8,000 to $8,000 for a first-time donation, and up to $10,000 for subsequent donations. Enjoy the financial freedom of not being able to pay off student loans. Make a down payment on a home, or create a college fund for your own children.

This is in a college?

Yeah. Some people are taking pictures of the flyer. I mean, it's good money, but it's not nearly as good as another egg donor help wanted ad that was offering $100,000 for the donor's eggs of a white woman Must be an athlete under 30 years old, proven college-level, athletic ability preferred. Other ads have promised anywhere between $2,000 to $50,000 for a donor. Sometimes the criteria is loose. Anybody is welcome. Nobody with eggs. Other times, it's down to a T. Young, healthy, intellectual aptitude, which is just a polite way of saying, We will be following up and verifying your SAT scores. Physical qualities, accepted. Another acceptable way of saying, Must be at least 6 feet tall and have hazel-colored eyes. If this is you, give us your eggs right now. In theory, it's not a bad deal in theory. If you forget about the part where high values are placed on with specific characteristics, which one professor states could raise eugenic concerns, if you try to forget that and make this a perfect hypothetical world, and the fact that this ad is posted in a college campus, which would target financially vulnerable college students who are just trying to survive and get a degree in this economy.

If you ignore all of that, I guess it's an even deal. One party gets money, one party gets eggs that they desperately want. It could be a good exchange, perhaps. But what happens if someone wants to make money from egg donations, but they themselves don't have the eggs? What do they do that? There's a lot of good reasons that someone does not want to donate their eggs. Religious, political, ethical, personal. Or maybe they're just like, Hey, my genetic material is less than stellar. This is me, okay? I hide in the bathroom about three times a week to cry in silence while contemplating my entire life. I don't think that you want my jeans by any means. I have allergies that will take me out in two seconds. Or maybe you do want that. Maybe you do want all of your kids and you want to have all these people out and about, but you don't like the idea that now every single person of a certain age that passes you, you wonder, Is that my kid? What if that's my kid? You're not my kid, right? Because you look like me. But one big component that people have said, I never want to be an egg donor, is the pain and health complications.

The process of retrieving an egg is anything but simple and easy. First, you have to go through hormones. Thousands dollars worth of hormones are just handed to you in this clear ziploc bag, if you will. Bye. Have a good time. Be safe for 10 days at home by yourself. You're not a nurse, you're not a doctor. You have to inject two drugs straight into your stomach by yourself. I mean, I guess you could have someone else do it for you, but everyone says, Don't have your husband do it for you. They don't know what the fork they're doing. The two drugs, one stimulates follicle growth, and that's the eggs grow in follicles. Then you have another one that prevents premature ovulation. To put it so simply that it could potentially be incorrect, in theory, it's the same. Your body needs to create a bunch of eggs and keep them safe inside of you so that they can come and extract them. Now, usually it's one egg per month.

Right, but they're going to have multiple?

Sometimes 50. What? You're just creating as many eggs as possible, and then you're making sure that they don't prematurely, I guess, mature. Wow. You have to prematurely ovulate, if you will, if you be more technical. So they have to keep them inside your ovaries until they're ready to be extracted by the egg retrieval process. The shots themselves are pretty bad. You end up getting a balloon-size bruise on your stomach, and it has to be injected through your lower abdomen. You run out of fresh places to administer the shots, which even if you don't poke the exact same spot, your entire lower body is bruised and sore, so everything feels painful. One citizen writes, I poke around my skin until I locate a spot that isn't sensitive. I have to just grab a piece of flush between my fingers. I breathe out, I stick it in, I relax the pinch, and then I inject super slowly. But it's not even just 20 minutes of pain every day, and then you're good. The hormones, they're lingering. This does not go away. Ron Netta's in writes, I didn't realize how much the hormones would affect me mentally. One of the hormones made me not sleep, which made all my other side effects so much worse.

Three nights of not sleeping, feeling depressed and experiencing the worst mood of my life. Never have I ever felt so uncomfortable with my own body. My body felt like a stranger's. None of my pants fit. My acne was a disaster. Everything hurt. Another citizen writes, My belly is bulging out. I'm hungry all the time. I have headaches nightly, and my joints hurt. I can barely squat down. My legs feel stiff. It's the worst thing I've ever experienced, hands down. My mind doesn't even feel like my own because it's whacked out, zonkt out on so many hormones. I have zero regulation, and yet I feel totally empty and hollow a lot of the times. But if you want to work out, let some of that stress out, you can't even work out. If you work out because your ovaries are so swollen, they could twist with physical movement of the body, which will result in what can only be described as the Satan himself spauning inside of your ovaries and hosting a dance party for all his little demons. That's what they say it feels like. That's just the hormones. Then it's time to actually take out the eggs, retrieve the eggs.

The overview is something like this. Step one, sedation or anesthesia. The level depends on the clinic, the country, the person's health requirements, but most of the time anesthesia is highly, highly appreciated. Step two, an ultrasound is inserted into the private part to locate the ovarian follicles that contain the mature eggs. Step three, a thin, long, hollow needle is guided through the vaginal wall and into each of the follicles. The fluid within the follicles which contains the eggs gets suctioned into the tube, vacuumed out of you. Then step four is the recovery and post-procedural steps. A lot of people say the actual procedure itself is the easiest part because you're knocked out. You don't have to do anything. You shouldn't feel too much. But when you wake up, that's where it gets bad. People have differing opinions. Some people say it's the worst pain their lives, and they've given birth before. Others say it's a few days of resting in bed and you recover. One netizen who had it bad writes, egg retrieval alone is absolutely brutal. They ultrasound you to find the eggs ready to release, then a foot long, large bore needle is thread it up your vagina and stab through the upper wall.

One person writes, Completely robs you of your life. It's incredibly emotionally taxing and physically taxing. The cramps and bloating afterwards, after the eggs were retrieved, were bad. I doubled in size. I mean, I talked to two girls in the lobby and they were just like, Yeah, it's going to be like that for two weeks. It's really bad. Why aren't we warned about this? Why aren't first-timers coached about how bad this is? And again, there are a lot of valid reasons that I can think of, of why someone would want to go through this. Because they want to have children. Because the idea of not having their own family is worse than the idea of getting their eggs retrieved. Or they want to help others have children. There are solid There are reasons out there. But what if you have to go through all of this because somebody is holding you hostage and making you, because they're farming your eggs. In the year of 2024, there were 257 Thais who fell victim to human traffickers. That's in 2024, and those are the ones that were actually rescued. So out of 257, 53 victims were found in Thailand.

204 were found in other countries. More than half of those victims were rescued by a foundation in Thailand called the Pavena Foundation. So it would make sense that you go to them when you have information about a huge international trafficking ring that involves the black market. A woman burst through the doors of the foundation one day in September. This is September of 2024. She has just escaped. She has been trafficked to a a different country. She escaped, and now she's here to tell the foundation, I mean, beg them, really, that they need to help. There's at least 100 other Thai girls trapped in there. They're being held captive. What do they want from them? Their eggs. What do you mean they want their eggs? Headlines all over the world would later read, Thai women rescued from human egg farm in Georgia. Woman kept us slaves in human egg farm. A lot of netizens initially thought Georgia in the US, which is considered US defaultism. Not everything is about the US, okay? But a lot of other netizens thought, women are being kidnapped to be exploited for work to work at a chicken egg farm, and they have to provide hard labor.

Is that what's happening right now? This is a crazy headline. What's going on? One comment reads, When I read about human egg farm, I had hoped that this was just some bombastic title, and it'll just be human trafficking to work on a chicken egg farm. But it's not about chicken eggs. It's about human eggs. They want human eggs. So what are they doing with all of these human eggs? A woman in Greece, by the name of Maria, is called into the police station. There's been a theft. She's sitting there with two police officers and a woman. She's like, Who the hell is this woman? She's not in uniform, so she's not a police officer. I'm a psychologist. They only bring in psychologists for really bad cases, right? What's going on? Ma'am, do you recall about four years prior, you had your eggs retrieved at a fertility clinic? Yeah, and I had my son about three years ago. What's going on? Yes, but do you recall how many eggs they harvested? They told me I only had six harvestable eggs. The police are quiet. Why? What's going on? Maria, the clinic lied to you. They actually harvested double that.

The other eggs that were never told to you about, they were used to create embryos for other women. There's been a theft. The fertility clinic stole Maria's other eggs, told her she only had six, she had twelve, and then used those eggs to create embryos for other women. Why? That is wild. Maria is so confused. It's not like she has special eggs. She even knows it herself. She admits she's not exceptional in that department of how the higher the education, the more cost for the eggs. She's not Ivy League educated, which, again, those are the standards not set by me. In fact, Maria's in her late 30s. She was a previous smoker. She would have technically been a pretty bad candidate for egg donation. But not only that, she never consented to this. This is not just something that's happening in Greece. A fertility clinic in UC Irvine paid more than $24 million to settle lawsuits after they took eggs from patients without their consent and used them to make other women pregnant. What? The settlement likely should have been a lot more, but at the time, nobody could even... They were arguing the cost, price of a human egg.

They were like, What is a human egg even worth, really? We don't know. It depends on the specifications of the egg donor. There's really no value of a human egg that everybody can agree upon. Yeah, It happens in other parts of the world because ultimately, it's a billion-dollar industry. When there is that much money on the line, people start doing some crazy things. A super producer is somebody whose body reacts so strongly to the hormones that they can get about 20 plus eggs per egg retrieval. Some people will even have 50 eggs in a retrieval, but you don't want that. In a regular cycle, one egg is released. During egg retrieval, you take hormone medications to induce a super ovulation of sorts, which typically produces around 13 to maybe 20 eggs in both ovaries. But if you produce more than 15 eggs at a single given time, you are at risk of developing ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome, otherwise known as OHSS. One netizen describes it as, pain and extreme bloating and pressure from my lower abdomen up to my chest. Really bad backache from base to shoulders, diarrhea, shortness of breath, When the bloating was at its worst, I was sleepless.

I couldn't even lie down, and I was throwing up. I was like a beached whale. I couldn't even bend over. When I was in the car, every bump in the car hurt. Another person writes, I had severe abdominal pain for six days post-ER. One moment where I was curled up in a soaking wet ball, dry heaving, uncontrollably, sweating. My husband was helplessly asking if there's anything that he could do to help. We drove to the doctor. 30 minutes drive was most excruciating thing I've ever experienced. Every bump in the road caused unbearable pain to my ovaries and abdomen that nearly caused me to puke and throw up. The doctors tell her that her ovaries are literally floating in fluid. So the sharp pain that she's feeling are her ovaries just floating and hitting her body in different places and rotating and twisting and moving around. The only way that they can provide any relief is to drain the fluid immediately. Sounds great, right? But how, you may wonder. Vaginally, with a needle, No anesthesia. She says she felt much better after getting the fluid drained, but not back to normal. Most people say that you will know if you have OHSS, because within a day, you go to sleep and you wake up looking eight months pregnant.

The worst part is, sometimes people don't even take you seriously. One citizen writes, I called my doctor and I was about to go to the ER, but she said that I was probably okay because I was still speaking. I mean, it's just been a journey. Another comment, I didn't have it that bad, but I was still bedridden for three weeks and had anywhere between 12 to 15 pounds of fluid hanging out at any given time. I had to sleep sitting up, otherwise the fluid would find itself into my lungs. But they said it wasn't that bad. Some people say they ended up with 30 pounds of additional fluid inside their bodies, which took two weeks for them to be fully drained and to be able to even walk again. One citizen writes, Truly was one of the scariest experiences of my life and extremely traumatic. I had to start seeing a therapist shortly after because of reoccurring panic attacks. I about 40% of my hair from all the stress and trauma. Therapy and medical leave was an absolute lifesaver. It took me two months to get back to my baseline normal. The more you donate eggs, the higher the chance that you will get OHSS.

If what the whistleblower from September 2024 is saying that there are 100 Thai girls held up in the country of Georgia forced to donate their eggs. I don't even know if donating is the right word here, forced to take their eggs out, then that's a lot of eggs, and that's very frequently that this is happening. Are they okay? One popular donor in California states, The US Industry Guideline limits egg donors to just six cycles. You can only donate your eggs six times. The guidelines are in place because the more you donate eggs, it's believed to higher your chance of suffering from health complications. But also, there's population concerns because if you donate too many times and it results in too many births, basically, you have to factor in the probability that two people will meet, get immediately involved in some intimate activities, and they may be related without even knowing. To be more crass, they're trying to make sure nonintentional incest does not happen between a bunch of half siblings. But one egg donor states, alarmingly, there's no way for a clinic to track egg retrievals from in their clinics. So a nurse just asks you, How many times have you donated?

I always just say four, even though it's been more than that. Four is a good number. And then after that, the clinics will stop asking you because they don't want to stop taking your eggs. They also want to make The egg donor is probably getting paid $6,000 to $10,000. For a round of IVF, it costs someone, a couple, anywhere between $30,000 to $60,000. The fertility clinics are making a lot of money.

Right. So one egg donation is 46 that they pay, but they get multiple eggs.

Usually, the batch of eggs is considered one. Oh, okay. Yes. But in theory, if a human baby farm were to exist, that means that the captives are forced to have their eggs extracted every month, every other month, if we're being super nice, which is not only highly unethical, aside from the human trafficking aspect, but health-wise, they're getting exposed to a lot of complicated health risks. One of the victims of the egg farm, a woman by the name of Ms. Na, she tells the Thai authorities, It was all there in a Facebook post. You go to the country of Georgia, become from a surrogate mother and get paid $800 a month during your pregnancy. Then once you give birth, you get paid $20,000 in cash. Side note, some people would say that they saw the ad and it was around $11,000. Other people said it was closer to $18,000, but it's somewhere in that range. It is a straightforward, easy plan. I mean, minus the fact that you have to travel to Georgia and there's no nonstop flights from Thailand, no direct flights. Then obviously, you got to get pregnant, give birth to a child that is not your But other than that, it's pretty relatively straightforward, the job offer.

It's not too good to be true. It's not the prince of some far away country is asking you to marry him. This is a job and you get paid for the job. And it's also really good money. I did some researching into this. Now, if you've worked in Thailand or you are Thai, I would love some additional insight. When I first tried to see the average salary in Thailand, it kept coming up at 35,000 USD, which in turn didn't make sense for a lot of people to take this surrogacy job for $18,000. Because if you're talking about a full pregnancy and then the before and afterwards, you're talking about a year of work. But going on forums, a lot of Thai people have stated the average salary calculations are based off of the main cities in Thailand, but also ex who are remote working or different countries that have set up there and they're moving in from different countries to work there. They state that if you just factor in the Thai locals, it's more so around 5,000 to 6,000 USD a year, which then makes more sense in the context of this case. The surrogacy job is like 2-3 years of work.

In 10, maybe 10 months, maybe 12 months, these posts are aggressively trying to recruit Thai women, and naturally it works. It's a job. People apply. It's assumed over A hundred women flew out under this pretense. They're going to live with a couple in Georgia. They're going to conceive their child, give birth, get paid, and come back home. There's no egg donation. They're getting the embryo of said couple. Okay, let's say there's a wife and husband. The wife is going to provide the eggs during IVF, and then it's going to be the embryo that is inserted into the Thai woman. She's going to be a surrogate, so it's not her genetic baby, if that makes sense. Which a lot of people are more open to that versus carrying their own child, I guess. I mean, genetically speaking, biologically speaking, if you will. You're going to be fed, cared for by the couple, so you can give birth and provide them their one true wish, which is to start a family. That's the plan. But first, Dubai. Dubai. Ms. Na says that she met up in a Thailand airport with 10 other Thai women who are going there for the same job, and two Chinese nationals came and met with them.

These are the middlemen of the agency. They're connecting the couple in Georgia to all of these women. This is their job. They're like a recruiting agency. They're a fertility agency. So the 12 of them, there's 12, 10 Thai women and the two Chinese nationals. They first fly to Dubai where they stay for three nights, staying at a hotel all paid for by the agency. Ms. Na, one of the victims, she says that nobody knew each other. Out of the 10 Thai women, not a single one of them were like, Oh, we're friends. We're sisters that we're doing this together. This is my family friend. Nobody. They're all complete strangers. But everybody's getting along. When they're in Dubai, the two Chinese nationals, the agency members, they're encouraging them to take pictures and to post It's still online. They're traveling to Dubai. When else are you going to be in Dubai? This is crazy. They have a few good nights. Then from Dubai, they fly to Armenia, where they again stay at another hotel, and they take a bunch of pictures. Then from there, they take a 10-hour train ride to the country of Georgia. That's where they're asked, Could we get your passport, please?

Why do you need our passports? It's very complicated. We've been working with this agency for a really long time, and there have been cases, not Not a lot, just very few, where someone will be going through the surrogacy and decide, I actually want this baby, and I'm going to flee, and all of the money. It just becomes a legal nightmare because genetically, you're talking about There's contracts in place, and it becomes an international issue. So could we please just get your passports? But if you ever decide that you want to travel or you want to do something that requires your passport, just let us know. We can okay it. Or even Even if you decide that you want to keep the baby, that's not okay, but we at least need to all talk about it and figure out the next process. It's not an unreasonable request. They seem pretty open to pretty much everything. They're like, If you want your passport, just let us know. Otherwise, we're just doing this to be safe. So everybody gives their passports. The guides log all 10 women's passports, and now it's time to be taken to their host family that they're going to be surrogates for.

Instead of being driven to a little suburban home with a white picket fence and a loving but desperate couple who just want a family as much as they want to breathe, the girls get dropped off at what can only be described as a warehouse of women. A building filled with 60 to 70 Thai women per building cramped. There's about 100 Thai women there being kept. According to Ms. Na, some of them likely took a 180 degree U-turn to turn right back, go back to Thailand, but they're blocked. You're going to be arrested if you try to leave this building. Technically, you're in the country of Georgia illegally. If you leave, you walk out, you try to scream, You're going to be arrested.

Wait, what do you mean they're there illegally?

I guess they're trying to insinuate that you came on a tourist visa, but you are here for work. You're going to be arrested, and you don't even know the language. Instead of becoming surrogate mothers, according to Ms. Na, each of the women were told that they will be harvested for their eggs. They will be given hormones to stimulate their ovaries, and once a month, they will be put under. Their eggs will be taken from them, and every month, the only way out is to pay the kidnappers $2,000 in cash as a ransom. The captors are allegedly telling them that if you donate your eggs for three months, three egg retrievals, you can leave, or you pay the ransom. Because we hosted you at all these hotels We flew you to Dubai. We took you to Armenia. We took you sightseeing. Most of these girls are in their 20s and 30s, with the oldest being, I think, 37. They don't have that money. $2,000? Again, many locals have stated that the annual salary in Thailand is $5,000 to $6,000. $2,000, $3,000 is a lot. Ms. Na says she was shocked by the unhealthy state of some of these young women that were trapped in there.

They're constantly crying and moaning. There's no family. There's no surrogacy. There's not a Georgian couple in sight. Ms. Na states the entire compound is run by what she can describe as Chinese gangsters. All she knows is there are constant waves of Chinese men coming in and out of the buildings. Yeah, it was the whole thing. Now Nobody is getting their passport back without providing eggs, which a lot of people feel, Don't we know this story already? Is this not The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood? Just to make sense of it, a surrogate, even the best surrogates that you could find. I'm sure if you're a celebrity and you have these private surrogacy programs, it's a lot more. But typically in America, it's around $100,000, and it's a lot. But in Georgia, it's a lot less, and it's a lot more complicated. There's also a higher fee paid to the actual surrogates versus egg retrieval. It seems like it's more profitable, is a speculation here. Because people are like, Why don't they just use them as surrogates? I'm sure you could find a lot of families that need surrogates.

Yeah, but they're doing something else, right?

Yes, they're taking their eggs.

Yeah, and then selling it to...

That's where all the conspiracies come in. Now, interestingly, are lots of theories about this case. One is, what the hell are they doing with the eggs? There are so many conspiracies that have come from that question. Two, some conspiracies debate if this is even real, if this has actually even happened, or if someone paid these three young women from Thailand to say these things, which is a crazy theory, a crazy accusation, a crazy conspiracy. It's an unhinged conspiracy, but it's mostly based off of what the Georgian authorities have said this case. Now, a few things to note. Surrogacy is considered legal in Georgia, which means any surrogacy work with legal contracts are considered legal. Obviously, there are stipulations, but the Georgian government is saying, There is nothing wrong with the surrogacy contracts that these Thai women have. They're saying, We looked into these three Thai women, we saw the surrogacy contracts that they have, and there's nothing weird about it. They're not being kidnapped. It seems fine. The Georgian authorities further state, We did our due diligence. We went to this so-called warehouse where the women were held captive, and they stayed, the Georgian Authority stayed.

We spoke to about 70 foreign citizens, and none of them, aside from the original three Thai women that reported this human egg farm, plus the additional whistleblower in September of 2024, none of them complained about being held against their will. Okay. So September 2024, the whistleblower escapes. Her family pays the ransom. She goes back to Thailand and she contacts the Pavena Foundation. She talks about three specific women that she befriended in the facility that she really wants to help save. The Pavina Foundation works with Interpol and saves those three women, pays their ransom, gets them out. The three women then start providing more information about the human egg farm. This was a few weeks ago. They were rescued January 30th. So now more information is coming out. They're doing interviews, well, one brief interview, and now everybody's wondering, what about the other woman? We got to get them out. What's happening in the egg farm? This is when it breaks global headlines. The Georgian authorities are saying none of the women that we found in the warehouses, 70 of them, None of them complained about being held against their will. In fact, we saw pictures of newborn babies taped against the walls.

They said that these are babies that were delivered by residents of the building, so clearly they're being surrogates. They're not being harvested for their eggs. This is all crazy. But the problem here being, even the Georgian authorities state that none of these women spoke Georgian, and maybe the only translators available were the ones that were running the surrogacy agency, so-called agency. They also stated that one woman who did speak Georgian said, We have our documents with us, our passports. If we want to leave, we can leave at any time. I don't know why the girls would say that they're victims of trafficking. She claims that the only reason that some people leave is because they can't conceive the baby, they can't get pregnant, which would defeat the purpose of being a surrogate. We have no clue if this is said by one of the Thai women found in the warehouse that is a victim or a so-called victim, or if this is the statement of one of the ones that are running the agency. We just know that she speaks Georgian. The Georgian authorities are saying, Hey, all the Thai reports that there's a human egg farm?

No, we talked to all of them. We didn't really talk to them because they don't speak Georgian, but no, nobody said that they're being held against their will. So you guys are wrong, which makes everybody a lot more suspicious. This statement has made things trickier because they're essentially stating that this is not real. This is not happening, at least that they can't verify. Now, another thing to note, the three women that were rescued in January 30th, they have done an interview and they're completely masked, clothed, they're anonymous, they don't want to be known. A lot of people wonder, what is the incentive of them to make up a crazy lie like this? It doesn't make any sense. People wonder, let's say the story is real, which a lot of netizens feel like it is, because it just doesn't make sense that it would be fake, why would they be selling the eggs? Who are they selling the eggs to? Because that's a lot of eggs. The first sensible thought netizens have is that this is run by an organized crime group that is very clearly well-established and has the ability to run an enterprise of this nature.

Now they're holding people hostage in a country where these people do not know the language, and they're being trafficked for their body parts, their eggs. According to some sources, a batch of human eggs is extracted from a person on the planet every 15 seconds. Now, to be fair, most times it's from people who plan to use their own eggs themselves through IVF, or they're freezing their eggs for the future. But a lot of it is from donors. Except they're not donating anything because like I said, they're getting compensated for their time and pain. They're getting paid. So health-wise, there is nothing good that comes from donating eggs, at least not physically. Some doctors have even stated it's more akin to donating a kidney. Medically speaking, it's not as harsh, it's not as dangerous as donating a kidney, but on medical charts, the donor gets nothing of positive or neutral value when donating eggs, at least, medically speaking, health-wise. So naturally, the payment is supposed to bridge that gap. For first-time egg donors, it's $6,000 to $10,000 in the US. Interestingly enough, the fees go up the more frequently you donate eggs. If you're a repeat donor, the fees can easily shoot to $12, $20,000.

Why is that? Because you can prove that you've had successful retrievals in the past. Because you can prove, Hey, last time I had 30 eggs. Then they're like, Okay, well, we can at least bet that you're maybe going to have 30 eggs or 20 eggs this time, 25 eggs. If you're an Ivy League graduate, you can expect between $20,000 to $50,000 on top of that. Or if you're a rare ethnicity, you can fetch higher prices. But that's in the US.

They're What does rare ethnicity mean?

At one point, it was like... I think it's a trend, honestly. Sometimes it's Korean, sometimes it's Eastern European. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

This is challenging so many weird social- Yes.

Okay, so I fell into a rabbit hole. Some places were saying that, for example, let's say Korean egg donors are high in demand. It is a mixture of Korean couples who want Korean children that cannot use their own eggs because it hasn't been working. They're looking for a Korean egg donor, and perhaps at that time, the Korean egg donor population is very low. There's not a lot of Korean women donating their eggs. That makes the prices a lot higher. Or sometimes it could be a social thing. They could be like, Hey, I'm really into Korean music these days. I want a Korean baby. I fell into a really strange rabbit hole of that. But that's in the US. There have been instances... Side note, I will say it's more of the former. It's more so like you want someone who looks like you or is the same ethnicity as you, typically. But that's in the United States. There have been reports that some parts of the world will only pay out maybe $180 for a batch of eggs. I say batch because that's the terminology I see used a lot. I'm not calling it a batch of eggs.

That's just what I've seen online through sources. Other articles have stated that globally, you can expect $1,000-$3,000. Obviously, it's higher in countries like the US and Western nations, but typically $1,000-$3,000 per batch is a safe assumption. Let's say they've got 100 people in there and they're forcibly donating their eggs. Let's say they get anywhere between $1,500, they're making close to $900,000 a year. And that's every other month that these 100 women are donating eggs. If you bump it up to every month, that would be a lot more. And now this enterprise or this organization, they're paying for flights, hotels. They're paying for the housing for a hundred different women, for food, for supplies, plus all of the costs of freezing eggs. When you keep eggs, it's not cheap. You can't just keep them in the fridge. You can't just keep them in a plastic baggie. We're going to go through it. But it's a very expensive medical process. The first conspiracy that people have, which is, I don't even know if I would call it a conspiracy, judging by the headlines, judging by the news that has come out so far about the human egg farm in Georgia.

A lot of people believe that the eggs are just being sold as donor eggs. Maybe there's lying on the part of the organization. Maybe they're lying and saying, These eggs were consensually donated, voluntarily donated by these people from this nation doing this, and they're lying about these eggs, or they're being sold on the black market. A lot of netizens who just read the headlines believe that it's being sold on the black market. But more people that are perusing through Reddit and getting into this rabbit hole about this case, they think there's no way. There's no way that they're selling the eggs on the black market because how many people reasonably go on the black market to buy human eggs? That's not even something. And then what? You buy black market human eggs and then you take them to a non-black market clinic? They're You're going to be like, You're crazy. What am I going to do with that? You can't give me that. That's insane. Where did you get these eggs? A lot of people believe that if this organization is truly doing this, trafficking humans, trafficking people to steal their eggs, they must be selling them to legitimate clinics.

Legitimate does not mean not shady. Legitimate does not mean good. I'm just talking legitimate businesses, LLCs. They're selling them to actual clinics who are buying buying these eggs, probably at a discounted price, and then selling them to the couples that need eggs. It's crazy because they also have apps for this. One woman who is struggling to find an egg donor, she said she was so obsessed at night She was scrolling through the donor app, and it was scrolling through Tinder. She's reading the specs of each donor. She said it was a really jolting experience, mentally speaking. There's a lot to say about the fertility industry. I would say fertility is complicated in the sense that you want people to be able to have children who desperately want children and will be good parents. But the fertility industry itself is pretty predatory against those women. They're doing against those people, those couples. They're doing everything to make a dollar exploiting all of that. They're like, Yeah, of course, I'll help you. Again, I'm not saying anything's wrong with wanting children or wanting to go through IVF. And I think IVF has created so many beautiful families That's not what I'm saying.

I think IVF itself is an advancement in technology and also, I guess, what the human body can do and what we can achieve with our minds and create families for people. But at the same time, people are exploiting it. Just clarifying. They think that they're selling these eggs to these legitimate clinics. Business Week actually tried to seek data on egg imports and exports in 15 different countries, and they state it's impossible to trace the flow of frozen eggs or even the donors themselves. For example, they were tracking a woman from South America who was donating her eggs into the United States. She actually donated with another friend of hers. The US Business Week went to the US FDA and said, Hey, can we get a log of all the people that have all the egg imports, human egg imports. They had one of the women, but they didn't list the other. That's such a clear discrepancy. Truly, there's no full proof, really organized flow of import and exports of eggs. It's really rather unregulated. But then some netizen's question, I mean, how many shady, legitimate clinics are there that are willing to buy eggs like this?

That doesn't make any sense. Also, if you store the eggs in a weird way, they're essentially worthless if you store them the wrong way, and it's very tricky to ship them, get it across borders, customs, which means they're paying for the flight, the hotel, the housing, the supplies, all of this, and probably hundreds of thousands of dollars of initial medical equipment that they need to start this. Because if you really factor in, they have to be stored. These eggs have to be stored in nitrogen tanks. They have to be kept at negative 320 degrees Fahrenheit. Otherwise, the eggs, they're not viable anymore. Even extracting them, you need specialized ultrasound equipment. You need to get general anesthesia, which, by the way, the victims have stated that they were under. You have to get anesthesia. You have to get all the medical You have to get personnel. You need doctors, you need nurses. Even if they're working under the table, they're black market doctors, they still have some medical knowledge, and they're getting paid some fee. Are they good people? No, but you get what I'm saying. They need a lot of money, which brings a lot of netizens to believe, what if they're not being sold to clinics?

What if they're being sold to research facilities? Because maybe clinics are a little bit more open to the public. Research facilities may Maybe it's not as public-facing, and you don't really know what's happening. Maybe they're being sold to different research facilities across the world. Maybe not in the US, maybe other places. Maybe in the US, we don't know.

But also, I feel like if that one was found, wouldn't there be more of these facilities?

Yeah, that's what a lot of netters say. There is no such thing as a one-off. But again, I don't know. I think every conspiracy afterwards gets a little bit crazier. We go from egg donation selling to regular clinics. Then we go into research facilities. Then some people believe that these eggs are being used to create babies, that they're going to sell into human trafficking. It gets Crazier and crazier. That's not really a flushed-out theory. I don't really find any proof other than just really whacked-out conspiracy theories on Twitter that are really like, No, they're making a baby farm somewhere. This is just step one of the manufacturing process. They're going to take the eggs and then put them somewhere else, and then they're going to create an embryo, and then they're going to create these children. Those children are going to be sold into sex trafficking. It's definitely a rabbit hole that I wouldn't go down, and there's no proof of that. Then you have another group of people that think, Wait, none of this makes sense. First of all, why would they let these women out if they pay ransom? If you pay the ransom, they get out, they can do exactly what happened.

They can alert someone about the black market business, and then their whole gig is up. But one netizen tries to argue, I mean, maybe they're so corrupt. Maybe the organization has ties with political figures. Maybe they have ties with the government. So even if you get out, no one believes you, no one's going to do anything. Hence, even the Georgian authorities said, nothing is happening here. That's a netizen theory. But others say, no, it just doesn't make sense. Why would they pay the ransom? Why would they get out? The US State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report rank Georgia as a tier one country in 2023, meaning they do everything to stop human trafficking. Does that mean human trafficking does not take place in Georgia? No. But the US is saying they're doing a good job at trying to curb human trafficking. So is it really that their government is corrupt or what's going on? One comment reads, I'm not saying this didn't happen, but I have yet to see when reputable news organizations report on this. So I'm going to reserve judgment for now. Think about the logistics of forced egg donors. You would need high-grade to store eggs in liquid nitrogen weeks and weeks of IVF processes.

And then, where are you selling them to? I can't imagine the IVF egg black market is particularly good. What's happening? I am open to being proven wrong, but I want news coverage from a well-known, respectable news organization. I will say the coverage on this is incredibly slim. I don't know if it's because everything in the US is overpowering on a global scale. There's been so much going on in the US political sphere. Maybe it's that. Maybe it's the fact that there's just not enough details. Maybe it's the fact that the Georgia authorities have said, No, this is not happening, versus the Thai authorities are like, No, something is happening, and it's become a little bit of a diplomatic, strange concern. Other people on Reddit have said, Maybe it's the fact that Georgia is such a small country. It's interesting because I do agree that might have played into it. A lot of people read the headlines and started freaking out saying, Oh, my gosh, this is happening in the United States. Once they found out it's not in the United States and it's in this tiny little country of Georgia, they said, Oh, it's not in the US.

Which is crazy because if it's still happening somewhere in the world, you should care about it. But they're like, Oh, it's not in the US. So they decided it was not important. I don't know. But I will say it is strange to the point where other conspiracies have popped up. They said, What if this has never happened and it's actually a setup? There was one Chinese account that was posting all over Chinese social media saying that this whole story is fake. There were two Chinese surrogacy agencies in Georgia that were, I guess, duking it out, if you will. And one of them decided to take their competition down. So they hired these three Thai women to make up these crazy allegations that they're harvesting human eggs at the other facility, and they won't have competition anymore. A lot of people initially believed that. But when you click on that Chinese account, they don't have any other post but that, which is weird. It's very strange.

I feel like this is the surface, surface, surface of this whole thing. I don't know.

Personally, I don't know. Maybe I'm so far into believing in the craziest things that humans can do because of this line of interest and work that I'm in. But I just don't see why anyone would lie. Even the The competition theory doesn't make sense. It's such a far-fetch theory. I don't know why people would lie about it. Maybe I'm naive. I just don't see how it's a lie. I don't see what anyone would gain from this. I don't see a single party that gains. I don't see the Thai government being like, Yes, this is great. We're gaining from this. I don't see the Pavena Foundation gaining from this. I don't see the three women, the four women gaining from this. I don't see anybody gaining from this. There's no, Hey, donate money to me because I need to stop this tirade of human egg trafficking. There's nothing. It's so strange. The more that I was going down the rabbit hole, the more the egg industry is insane. It's like a billion-dollar industry, and a lot of strange things are happening all across the world. Maria from Greece is having her eggs stolen. Uc Irvine was using eggs of other patients to make other women pregnant.

There's a lot of shady stuff happening, so I just don't see how it's not happening. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong, though. I will say there is not news coverage from any of the big mainstream media outlets in the United States, but there are from big news outlets in Thailand. What are your thoughts on this? Netizens have been responding to this case the way that you would imagine. Some are just relieved that it's not happening in the US, which, again, I think it's crazy. Other people are making chicken egg correlations, writing, The egg shortage has gone too far, or simply writing, Human caviar. But I will say most netizens have had a normal sympathetic, albeit enraged response, because it does feel like if this is true, we're all heading straight towards Handmaid's tail. We're bypassing all security measures and just going straight to Margaret Atwood, and that seems like it's becoming a reality. One netizen writes, I did IVF twice, and yeah, the whole thing, just on a physical level, is really hard. Emotionally, it was worse. Physically, though, hard. The medications you take during the stimming phase, which is stimulating the follicles to make your ovaries produce more eggs.

It's got a range of side effects, like constant severe headaches, mood changes, mood swings, including anger, depression, the physical discomfort toward the end before the retrieval. It's insane. I can't even imagine what these women went through. I was mentally and physically done after two cycles, and I was willingly doing it. I was doing it so I could have kids. Being forced repeat that monthly, it's torture. Other comments read, This is so horrific. I have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that I'm not reading a dystopian fiction anymore. Another writes, The fertility industry is already deeply unethical in many ways. Catering almost exclusively to the wealthy while exploiting poor and marginalized women as surrogates and as egg donors. But this case is beyond even that level of quiet exploitation. This is out and out human trafficking, medical torture, and slavery, to which someone theorizes, If they hadn't escaped, they would have ended up being harvested for their organs, too, I expect. Or another theory, which is very dark to think about. Someone writes, With global birth rates dropping, this thing will only grow. Or another one grimly writes, As a father to daughters, I guess I have to add this to my list of potential dangers my girls will face.

For fuck's sake, this shit is getting long. Or another one says, Well, yet another thing a bear would never do to me. And one comment that I deeply resonate with. The only good type of human traffickers are the dead ones. And that is today's case. What are your thoughts on this one? Let me know in the comments and stay safe. I will see you guys in the next one.