Word: wheelerism
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...half months after her first surrogate pregnancy began, as twin babies kick inside her, Beasley could not be much farther from a happy ending. She's mired in a bitter legal battle with Charles Wheeler and Martha Berman, the San Francisco attorneys who found her classified ad on the Internet and flew her over last March for a trip to a fertility clinic. Pregnant with one more baby than Wheeler and Berman wanted, Beasley says she has received only $1,000 of the $20,000 they originally agreed to pay her. The fate of the twins she's carrying...
Beasley acknowledges that Wheeler and Berman, who have refused to talk to the media, made it clear in their discussions that they wanted just one child. What's more, notes Stanford law professor Deborah Rhode, "theirs was a very extensive contract. There were 50 clauses providing for every contingency," including the case of a multiple pregnancy, a real possibility given that three donor eggs fertilized by Wheeler's sperm were implanted in Beasley's womb. The contract required Beasley to honor the couple's decision about whether to have a selective reduction, the termination of one or more fetuses...
...position as the world's largest independent guidebook producer, with annual sales of its 430 titles pulling in $30 million, gives some indication. India and Southeast Asia on a Shoestring (the "yellow bible") are among the top sellers, with more than half a million bought of each. Founder Tony Wheeler is frequently cited as the man who changed the way we travel...
...more and more people hit the road, there are fewer and fewer pioneers. Backpackers move as a herd, not unlike the package tourists they try to avoid. The overcrowding and bottlenecks are at their worst in Asia, the destination of choice since Wheeler and his wife Maureen released the first Lonely Planet book, Across Asia on the Cheap, in 1973. A well-worn trail links beaches in Goa (India), Boracay (Philippines), Bali (Indonesia) and southern Thailand and the peaks of Yangshuo (China) and Kathmandu (Nepal). In such numbers, backpackers can't help but trample culture and nature, whatever their environmental...
Nearly 30 years on, Wheeler concedes that backpackers have helped ruin parts of Asia. "The place I always look at is Kuta beach on Bali," says the 54-year-old Australian. "It was really quite a wonderful place, and I go back now and think, 'What a hellhole.'" His books bear some responsibility, he admits. "We are an influence, there's no question of that, and maybe there wouldn't have been so many backpackers without us." But as visitor numbers climb each year, no one has any plans to stem the flood. Wheeler offers no grand solutions, sticking...