Jeremy Snyder

• BA, MA, PhD
• Professor (Full) at Simon Fraser University

Crowdfunding campaigners can struggle with protecting their personal information while providing a compelling case for why their campaign is worthy of support. Little research has examined donation‐based crowdfunding campaigners' experience of protecting their sensitive health‐related information while trying to meet their fundraising goals. Our re...

Background Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, long-term care (LTC) homes in British Columbia, Canada, restricted visitation to ensure the safety of their residents against transmission of the novel coronavirus. As such, these LTC homes had to quickly implement a rapid rollout of telehealth services to maintain physician care for residents while avoidi...

Background Complementary and alternative (CAM) cancer treatment is often expensive and not covered by insurance. As a result, many people turn to crowdfunding to access this treatment. Objective The aim of this study is to identify the rationales of patients with cancer seeking CAM treatment abroad by looking specifically at crowdfunding campaigns...

Background Alternative cancer clinics, who provide treatment associated with earlier time to death, actively seek to create favorable views of their services online. An unexplored means where alternative cancer clinics can shape their appeal is their Google search results. Methods We retrieved the Google listing and Google reviews of 47 prominent...

Background International retirement migration, which is the seasonal or permanent relocation of older people to another country, has grown in popularity in recent years. These retirees are motivated by the promise of warmer winter climates that are conducive to participating in health-promoting recreational and social activities. Ease of cross-bord...

Previous research on abortion‐related crowdfunding campaigns found that they are impacted by stigma around abortion and rarely successful. This paper analyzes crowdfunding activity in the US following a leak of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs. V. Jackson Women's Health Organization , a time period that saw increased financial support of abortio...

This book offers a close examination of the ethical, political, and practical dimensions of donation-based online crowdfunding for basic needs including medical treatment, housing, food, and education. Crowdfunding uses online platforms and social networks to raise money from friends, family, and complete strangers for a variety of projects and nee...

This book offers a close examination of the ethical, political, and practical dimensions of donation-based online crowdfunding for basic needs including medical treatment, housing, food, and education. Crowdfunding uses online platforms and social networks to raise money from friends, family, and complete strangers for a variety of projects and nee...

This book offers a close examination of the ethical, political, and practical dimensions of donation-based online crowdfunding for basic needs including medical treatment, housing, food, and education. Crowdfunding uses online platforms and social networks to raise money from friends, family, and complete strangers for a variety of projects and nee...

This book offers a close examination of the ethical, political, and practical dimensions of donation-based online crowdfunding for basic needs including medical treatment, housing, food, and education. Crowdfunding uses online platforms and social networks to raise money from friends, family, and complete strangers for a variety of projects and nee...

This book offers a close examination of the ethical, political, and practical dimensions of donation-based online crowdfunding for basic needs including medical treatment, housing, food, and education. Crowdfunding uses online platforms and social networks to raise money from friends, family, and complete strangers for a variety of projects and nee...

This book offers a close examination of the ethical, political, and practical dimensions of donation-based online crowdfunding for basic needs including medical treatment, housing, food, and education. Crowdfunding uses online platforms and social networks to raise money from friends, family, and complete strangers for a variety of projects and nee...

This book offers a close examination of the ethical, political, and practical dimensions of donation-based online crowdfunding for basic needs including medical treatment, housing, food, and education. Crowdfunding uses online platforms and social networks to raise money from friends, family, and complete strangers for a variety of projects and nee...

This book offers a close examination of the ethical, political, and practical dimensions of donation-based online crowdfunding for basic needs including medical treatment, housing, food, and education. Crowdfunding uses online platforms and social networks to raise money from friends, family, and complete strangers for a variety of projects and nee...

This book offers a close examination of the ethical, political, and practical dimensions of donation-based online crowdfunding for basic needs including medical treatment, housing, food, and education. Crowdfunding uses online platforms and social networks to raise money from friends, family, and complete strangers for a variety of projects and nee...

This book offers a close examination of the ethical, political, and practical dimensions of donation-based online crowdfunding for basic needs including medical treatment, housing, food, and education. Crowdfunding uses online platforms and social networks to raise money from friends, family, and complete strangers for a variety of projects and nee...

This book offers a close examination of the ethical, political, and practical dimensions of donation-based online crowdfunding for basic needs including medical treatment, housing, food, and education. Crowdfunding uses online platforms and social networks to raise money from friends, family, and complete strangers for a variety of projects and nee...

Contemporary accounts of the concept of exploitation can be grouped into camps that tie the wrongness of taking advantage of another person to: (1) the unfair division of benefits resulting from an interaction; (2) excessive benefits resulting from structural injustice; and (3) a failure of respect for others’ humanity. In practice, accounts of exp...

This book offers a close examination of the ethical, political, and practical dimensions of donation-based online crowdfunding for basic needs including medical treatment, housing, food, and education. Crowdfunding uses online platforms and social networks to raise money from friends, family, and complete strangers for a variety of projects and nee...

BACKGROUND Complementary and alternative (CAM) cancer treatment is often expensive and not covered by insurance. As a result, many people turn to crowdfunding to access this treatment. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to identify the rationales of patients with cancer seeking CAM treatment abroad by looking specifically at crowdfunding campaigns...

Medical crowdfunding is growing in popularity in a number of countries, including Canada. In the crowdfunding context people write and share their own stories. This activity also intersects with conventional news media practices when journalists prepare stories about these campaigns. This intersection raises the question of what are print journalis...

Introduction Donation-based crowdfunding was heavily used during the COVID-19 pandemic. While most of these campaigns were uncontroversial, others spread misinformation or undermined public health. In response, mainstream crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe restricted what campaigns they would host. This led some campaigns to shift to lesser-known...

In the context of medical tourism, circumvention tourism consists of traveling abroad with the intention of participating in a health-related activity that is prohibited in one’s own country but not in the destination country. This practice raises a host of legal and ethical questions that focus on how the traveler should be treated once they have...

While donation‐based crowdfunding for health‐related purposes raises hundreds of millions of dollars yearly, most campaigns fail to meet their fundraising goals. Crowdfunding campaigners are advised to seek traditional news media coverage of their campaigns to increase donor interest and fundraising success. In this study, we seek to better underst...

Background: Alternative cancer treatment is associated with a greater risk of death than cancer patients undergoing conventional treatments. Anecdotal evidence suggests cancer patients view paid advertisements promoting alternative cancer treatment on social media, but the extent and nature of this advertising remain unknown. This context suggests...

BACKGROUND Alternative cancer treatment is associated with a greater risk of death than cancer patients undergoing conventional treatments. Anecdotal evidence suggests cancer patients view paid advertisements promoting alternative cancer treatment on social media, but the extent and nature of this advertising remain unknown. This context suggests a...

Social media spreads information about vaccines and can be used to better understand public attitudes about them. Using American crowdfunding campaigns that mentioned COVID-19 vaccines from January 2020 to March 2021, this paper investigates public attitudes towards vaccines, specifically the perceived role vaccines could (or couldn’t) play in endi...

Every year tens of thousands of older Canadians travel to the southern United States (US) to live there seasonally during the winter months to enjoy a warmer climate—a practice known as international retirement migration. Several factors facilitate participation in this transnational mobility, including having the financial resources needed to live...

Background Online crowdfunding platforms such as GoFundMe fundraise millions of dollars annually for campaigners. Medical crowdfunding is a very popular campaign type, with campaigners often requesting funds to cover basic health and medical care needs. Here we explore the ways that health needs intersect with housing needs in Canadian crowdfunding...

Natural herd immunity, where community-acquired infections in low-risk populations are used to protect high risk populations from infection–has seen high profile support in some quarters, including through the Great Barrington Declaration. However, this approach has been widely criticized as ineffective and misinformed. In this study, we examine me...

International retirement migration involves the seasonal relocation of older adults to destinations abroad. For Canadians, this is typically done to escape winter at home in favour of warmer weather elsewhere. In this paper, we explore how Canadian newspapers chronicled the changes associated with managing the COVID‐19 pandemic in Canada, including...

Background Cannabidiol (CBD) is commonly used to manage symptoms in conditions and diseases for which there is limited clinical research for its application. How consumers arrive and decide to use CBD for medical treatment, despite lacking clinical evidence, is largely unknown. In this paper, we seek to identify the informational pathways through w...

Online charitable crowdfunding has become an increasingly prevalent way for Canadians to deal with costs that they would otherwise not be able to shoulder on their own. With the onset of COVID-19 and related lockdown measures, there is evidence of a surge in crowdfunding use relating to the pandemic. This study gathered, classified, and analysed Ca...

Background In Canada, the legalization of cannabis has enabled cannabidiol (CBD) to become a popular commercial product, increasingly used for medical or therapeutic purposes. There are currently over one thousand CBD products available globally, ranging from oil extracts to CBD-infused beverages. Despite increased usage and availability, the evide...

In our critique of a pay‐to‐participate study, we address how the failure to disclose study‐related payments appears to have violated STEM CELLS Translational Medicine's editorial policies concerning conflict‐of‐interest and financial disclosure. Our analysis also identifies broader ethical issues and scientific concerns related to pay‐to‐participa...

Background Every year, tens of thousands of older Canadians travel abroad during the winter months to enjoy warmer destinations that offer social and recreational opportunities. How do these Canadians prepare to manage their health while abroad? In this analysis we explore this question by developing a typology of preparatory strategies. Methods S...

Objectives. To understand whether and how crowdfunding campaigns are a source of COVID-19–related misinformation. Methods. We searched the GoFundMe crowdfunding platform using 172 terms associated with medical misinformation about COVID-19 prophylaxes and treatments. We screened resulting campaigns for those making statements about the ability of t...

Background Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is increasingly being integrated into conventional medical care for cancer, used to counter the side effects of conventional cancer treatment, and offered as an alternative to conventional cancer care. Our aim is to gain a broader understanding of trends in CAM interventions for cancer and cro...

When people use online platforms to solicit funds from others for health-related needs, they are engaging in medical crowdfunding. This form of crowdfunding is growing in popularity, and its visibility is increasing as campaigns are commonly shared via social networking. A number of ethical issues have been raised about medical crowdfunding, one of...

Aim: The US FDA has two nontrial pre-approval access pathways: expanded access (EA) and right to try (RTT). Reports of successful RTT use are scarce, and the FDA has not yet published RTT usage data, yet proponents tout its utility. In the face of this discrepancy and a lack of transparency of usage statistics, our aim is to add to the limited unde...

Objectives. To use crowdfunding campaigns to better understand how cannabidiol (CBD) is represented (and misrepresented) as cancer-related care. Methods. We analyzed CBD-related crowdfunding campaigns (n = 155) created between January 2017 and May 2019 in multiple countries on GoFundme.com. Results. More than 81.9% of campaigns fundraised CBD...

Background aims Studies examining crowdfunding campaigns for stem cell interventions have typically focused on campaigns seeking funds to send individuals to businesses marketing unlicensed and unproven stem cell products. However, some crowdfunding campaigns identify academic medical centers as destinations for individuals seeking access to stem c...

Some individuals seek to sell unproven interventions directly to consumers ahead of evidence. Chapter 6 examines the case of direct to consumer sales of unproven stem cell products to seriously ill individuals. In many cases, clinics selling these interventions are owned by or employ physicians both to administer these treatments and bolster these...

Chapter 8 looks at crowdfunding for unproven medical interventions, which typically are not paid for by public or private insurance. This system of fundraising plays a significant role in the exploitation of hope by funneling resources to exploiters and creating a pool of hopeful donors who are often misled about the interventions they are supporti...

Chapter 2 reviews academic accounts of exploitation. The dominant understanding of exploitation links it to a form of unfairness. Wertheimer argues that a transaction can have features that make it “specially” unfair, as when an employer has a monopoly on employment opportunities. Alternatively, an exchange can be unfair considering a structural in...

One often hears stories of people in terrible and seemingly intractable situations who are preyed upon by individuals offering empty promises of help. Frequently these cases are condemned as “exploiting the hope” of another. These accusations are made in a range of contexts, including human smuggling, the beauty industry, and unproven medical inter...

In the Chapter 4 the author argues that fairness-based accounts of exploitation form a poor basis for understanding the distinctive wrongness of exploiting hope. Structural fairness or justice-based accounts are also problematic in the medical context. Structural exploitation can describe some instances of injustices giving rise to the potential fo...

Chapter 3 turns to academic analyses of hope. The author largely adopts Adrian Martin’s account. She proposes what she calls the incorporation analysis of hope where hoping entails being attracted to an outcome, seeing it as possible, treating this attraction as licensing a reason for certain ways of feeling, thinking, and acting toward that outcom...

This chapter presents and analyzes popular uses of variations of “exploiting hope” drawn from the press. Popular accounts of exploiting hope often focus on cases of desperately poor and sick people struggling to survive or meet their basic needs. But they also include relatively privileged people who are hoping for fame, great wealth, or a beautifu...

In Chapter 7, the author discusses the promise of early access to unproven interventions through so-called right-to-try legislation. This legislation was designed with the stated intent of expanding access to new medical interventions undergoing clinical trials where individuals could not participate in these trials. In practice, very few people ha...

The author argues in this book that the exploitation of hope should be understood as inappropriately taking advantage of a partial entrustment with aspects of others’ well-being. This respect-based account should lead individuals to ask the following questions: (1) Should this interaction happen at all or the partial entrustment be accepted ? (2) I...

Chapter 5 examines human participation in phase I clinical trials for experimental cancer interventions and phase III clinical trials in low- and middle-income countries. In both cases, these participants may take part in these trials in the hope of accessing an experimental intervention that will improve their own health or that of their communiti...

Background: Increasing numbers of older individuals opt to spend extended time abroad each year for lifestyle, health, and financial reasons. This practice is known as international retirement migration, and it is particularly popular among retirees in Global North countries such as Canada. Despite the popularity of international retirement migrat...

Background Medical crowdfunding is the process of using a crowdfunding platform to raise funds for medical treatment and associated expenses, such as missing work or transportation costs to access care. This type of crowdfunding has become increasingly popular, and is an effective tool to raise financing for medical treatment in the absence of ins...

Lyme disease remains a contested illness in Canada, thereby making the diagnostic and treatment journeys difficult for some people. One outcome of this is that increasing numbers of people are turning to medical crowdfunding to support access to alternative therapies, non-local health care providers and assist with managing the costs of everyday li...

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Online crowdfunding platforms such as GoFundMe are used to raise funds for health-related expenses associated with medical conditions such as organ transplantation. By investigating crowdfunding in Canadian organ transplantation, this study aimed to increase understanding of the motivations and outcomes of organ transplantation crowdfunding. Canadi...

BACKGROUND There are a range of perceived gaps and shortcomings in the publicly funded Canadian health system. These include wait times for care, lack of public insurance coverage for dental care and pharmaceuticals, and difficulties accessing specialist care. Medical crowdfunding is a response to these gaps where individuals raise funding from the...

Background: There are a range of perceived gaps and shortcomings in the publicly funded Canadian health system. These include wait times for care, lack of public insurance coverage for dental care and pharmaceuticals, and difficulties accessing specialist care. Medical crowdfunding is a response to these gaps where individuals raise funds from the...

Medical crowdfunding has raised many ethical concerns, among them that it may undermine privacy, widen health inequities, and commodify health care. One motivation for medical crowdfunding has received particular attention among ethicists. Recent studies have shown that many individuals are using crowdfunding to finance access to scientifically uns...

It is known that older persons from many countries often enjoy living abroad for weeks or months of the year, often to avoid periods of harsh weather at home. However, there has been little attempt to synthesize existing knowledge of this practice, often called retirement migration. Scoping reviews are a widely accepted form of research synthesis....

When Canadian medical tourists go abroad, they are often accompanied by friends and family, referred to as caregiver-companions, who provide informal care. These individuals play a role in patient decision-making and are stakeholders in medical tourism, yet little is known about their participation in this consumer health practice. To examine the r...

This article explores how existing health inequities in the Guatemalan health system facilitate the emergence of its medical tourism industry. We report on our thematic analysis of 50 key informant interviews conducted with 4 groups of stakeholders in the local medical tourism sector. Participants frequently discussed the interplay between the coun...

Background: Medical tourism, which involves cross-border travel to access private, non-emergency medical interventions, is growing in many Latin American Caribbean countries. The commodification and export of private health services is often promoted due to perceived economic benefits. Research indicates growing concern for health inequities cause...

Objective: To characterize the marketplace for direct-to-consumer (DTC) unproven stem cell-based interventions (SCBI) for neurologic diseases and injuries using crowdfunding data. Methods: Search terms were developed from previous empirical studies of DTC businesses and the International Classification of Diseases-11 for neurologic diseases and...

Objectives Medical crowdfunding is a rapidly growing practice where individuals leverage social networks to raise money for health-related needs. This practice has allowed many to access healthcare and avoid medical debt but has also raised a number of ethical concerns. A dominant criticism of this practice is that it is likely to increase inequiti...

Numerous social, economic and academic pressures can have a negative impact on representations of biomedical research. We review several of the forces playing an increasingly pernicious role in how health and science information is interpreted, shared and used, drawing discussions towards the role of narrative. In turn, we explore how aspects of na...

Background: The opiate crisis in Canada, among other causes, has led to increased demand and wait times for addiction-related services. One response to this situation has been for Canadians to seek crowdfunding support for services outside of the public system. However, little is known about how large this practice is, what addiction-related servi...

Purpose: This article explores first-hand accounts of Canadian bariatric patients’ experiences of seeking and obtaining weight loss surgery abroad through the practice of medical tourism. While researchers have identified many of the challenges and associated health and safety risks imposed on patients by engaging in medical tourism generally, litt...

The field of regenerative medicine is widely viewed as having the potential to improve treatment options for a broad range of conditions. Stem cell research in particular has been celebrated for its considerable clinical promise. Although measured enthusiasm surrounding this area of research is warranted, it must be balanced by patience and set in...

Scholars argue that globalization is reconfiguring socio-political cleavages. No longer do class divisions dominate. Rather, the argument goes, societies are increasingly divided between ‘cosmopolitans’ (who welcome globalization) and ‘communitarians’ (who do not). While that may be the case, studies generally consider the impact of globalization o...

Luminaire-level lighting controls (LLLCs), also called luminaire-integrated controls, have the potential to reduce energy use, compared with traditional zone controls, when used in an open office setting. Additionally, LLLCs can be installed without incurring the additional costs associated with the installation of connected lighting. Due to this p...

Medical crowdfunding is an increasingly popular means of leveraging social networks to raise money for health‐related expenses. While providing crucial access to care for many, it is also accompanied by increased risks of fraudulent activity. While many such cases of fraud have been publicized by the news media, and research articles mention the po...

Background Regulation of the medical tourism and public health sectors overlap in many instances, raising questions of how patient safety, economic growth, and health equity can be protected. The case of Guatemala is used to explore how the regulatory challenges posed by medical tourism should be dealt with in countries seeking to grow this sector....

Background: Caribbean offshore medical schools are for-profit, private institutions that provide undergraduate medical education to primarily international students, including from the United States or Canada. Despite the growing role that offshore medical schools play in training Canadian physicians, little is known about how these institutions a...

Background: Medical tourism is a practice where patients travel internationally to purchase medical services. Medical tourists travel abroad for reasons including costly care, long wait times for care, and limited availability of desired procedures stemming from legal and/or regulatory restrictions. This paper examines bariatric (weight loss) surg...

Background: Medical tourism is a term used to describe the phenomenon of individuals intentionally traveling across national borders to privately purchase medical care. The medical tourism industry has been portrayed in the media as an "escape valve" providing alternative care options as a result of vast economic asymmetries between the global nor...

Background: Task shifting is increasingly used to address human resource shortages impacting HIV service delivery in low- and middle-income countries. By shifting basic tasks from higher- to lower-trained cadres, such as Community Health Workers (CHWs), task shifting can reduce overhead costs, improve community outreach, and provide efficient scal...

Purpose: Despite established knowledge that tourists often fall ill or are injured abroad, little is known about their treatment. The intent of this study was to explore health care professionals’ treatment provision experiences on Cozumel Island, Mexico. Methods: 13 semi-structured interviews were undertaken with professionals across a number of h...

Aim: To better understand how prospective customers interpret claims of businesses marketing unproven stem cell products that they are engaging in research activities. Materials & methods: The authors examined 408 crowdfunding campaigns for unproven stem cell interventions for references to research activities. Results: The authors identified...

Because insurers typically will not pay for unproven stem cell interventions, patients seeking these services must purchase them out-of-pocket or use alternative funding mechanisms such as crowdfunding (ie, using online social networks to solicit donations).¹ Crowdfunding for stem cell interventions raises questions concerning how their benefits an...

Background Although the global growth of privatized health care services in the form of medical tourism appears to generate economic benefits, there is debate about medical tourism’s impacts on health equity in countries that receive medical tourists. Studies of the processes of economic globalization in relation to social determinants of health su...

Background Canadian international medical graduates are Canadian-citizens who have graduated from a medical school outside of Canada or the United States. A growing number of Canadians enroll in medical school abroad, including at Caribbean offshore medical schools. Often, Canadians studying medicine abroad attempt to return to Canada for postgradu...

We examine the perspectives of 14 key informants with extensive knowledge of dental care provision in Canada regarding systemic factors that could push Canadians to participate in dental tourism. Drawing on interview discussions about Canadians' access to dental care and their participation in dental tourism, we identify systemic factors related to...

International lifestyle and retirement migration is a growing phenomenon, yet little is known about migrants' experiences of health care in destination countries. This includes use of and access to pharmaceutical selling establishments. This article explores international lifestyle and retirement migrants' experiences and perceptions of the local p...

Background Medical tourism, the practice of persons intentionally travelling across international boundaries to access medical care, has drawn increasing attention from researchers, particularly in relation to potential ethical concerns of this practice. Researchers have expressed concern for potential negative impacts to individual safety, public...

Los Algodones, Mexico is characteristic of other medical border towns whose proximity to the Mexico-United States border enables American and Canadian patients to take advantage of economic asymmetries on either side of the border to access desired health care. Los Algodones is unique, however, in its focus on the provision of dental care and claim...

Background Offshore medical schools are for-profit, private enterprises located in the Caribbean that provide undergraduate medical education to students who must leave the region for postgraduate training and also typically to practice. This growing industry attracts many medical students from the US and Canada who wish to return home to practice...

Medical tourism is the practice of traveling across international borders with the intention of accessing medical care, paid for out-of-pocket. This practice has implications for preferential access to medical care for Canadians both through inbound and outbound medical tourism. In this paper, we identify four patterns of medical tourism with impli...

Background When seeking care at international hospitals and clinics, medical tourists are often accompanied by family members, friends, or other caregivers. Such caregiver-companions assume a variety of roles and responsibilities and typically offer physical assistance, provide emotional support, and aid in decision-making and record keeping as med...

This paper explores and adds to Gillian Brock and Michael Blake’s debate on health worker migration. Brock argues for a limited right of states to restrict the migration of health workers beyond their borders. She offers a range of reasons to support this argument based broadly on her account of global justice. In the context of health worker migra...

This paper explores and adds to Gillian Brock and Michael Blake's debate on health worker migration. Brock argues for a limited right of states to restrict the migration of health workers beyond their borders. She offers a range of reasons to support this argument based broadly on her account of global justice. In the context of health worker migra...

Medical crowdfunding is growing in terms of the number of active campaigns, amount of funding raised and public visibility. Little is known about how campaigners appeal to potential donors outside of anecdotal evidence collected in news reports on specific medical crowdfunding campaigns. This paper offers a first step towards addressing this knowle...

The dental tourism industry situated along the northern Mexican border provides care primarily to American and Canadian tourists crossing the border to access dental treatments that cost less than domestically provided. This movement of patients across the Mexico–United States (US) border supports the practices of numerous dental clinics in norther...

Canadians are motivated to travel abroad for bariatric surgery owing to wait times for care and restrictions on access at home for various reasons. While such surgery abroad is typically paid for privately, if "bariatric tourists" experience complications or have other essential medical needs upon their return to Canada, these costs are borne by th...