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Developing countries like India, Thailand, and Malaysia are promoting medical tourism as a commodity, generating income through their economic trade contributing to their national revenue. However, there is no legal framework formulated within these countries to regulate its medical tourism industry. In Malaysia, the current legislation that regulates the private health care facilities is not enough to cover all avenues of medical tourism, especially since the industry largely implicates the private sector. Hence, we aim to explore the consequences of the pro-medical tourism stance of Malaysia and its impact toward stem cell tourism. The in-depth interviews of Malaysian policymakers and the systematic review of academic articles and government documents revealed that the current legislation in Malaysia neglects many areas within medical tourism namely medical visa, insurance, and medical extradition that protects the wellbeing of tourists. The deficiency in the absence of a specific law or policy cultivates stem cell tourism that remains generally unregulated plagued with many ethical exploitations, judging by the pro-medical tourism stance.

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The need to understand the systems that support ethical health research has long been recognized, but there are limited descriptions of actual health research ethics (HRE) systems. Using participatory network mapping methods, we empirically defined Malaysia's HRE system. 13 Malaysian stakeholders identified 4 overarching and 25 specific HRE system functions and 35 actors internal and 3 external to the Malaysian HRE system responsible for those functions. Functions requiring the most attention were: advising on legislation related to HRE; optimizing research value to society; and defining standards for HRE oversight. Internal actors with the greatest potential for more influence were: the national network of research ethics committees; non‐institution‐based research ethics committees; and research participants. The World Health Organization, an external actor, had the largest untapped potential for influence overall. In summary, this stakeholder‐driven process identified HRE system functions and actors that could be targeted to increase HRE system capacity.