From ‘It’s a boy! It’s a girl!’ to ‘It’s a Y! It’s an X!’
by Cathy Cudmore
Choosing the sex of our children? This is no longer a question for the future. Our parents used to say “Beggars can’t be choosers”, but in the case of reproduction, now they can. Parents who dream of having a little girl, yet continuously produce male offspring, can now make their dreams come true. Maybe it sounds a little corny to some, but for some parents this is a dream that has become obtainable—a dream that has crossed over into the realm of reality.
Genetics is a very confusing, complex field of science and it has taken centuries for scientists to merely figure out how some of our internal information network functions. Now our scientists have given us a way to determine the sex of our own offspring. And while this is a dream come true for some, it has also become an ethical and religious question of “should we?” for others.
The gender-choosing process is an in vitro fertilization technique called Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD). “In vitro” is a term that describes the process of fertilization in a lab – basically fertilization of the sperm and egg in a Petri dish. Many sperm and eggs from the parents are mixed together, with the hope that more than one healthy embryo will be produced. The embryos are then tested for gender, and a few healthy embryos of the chosen sex are implanted in the hopeful mother. Depending on the company, clients are charged about $20,000 for PGD, plus travel expenses.
There are other gender-selection techniques that were discovered before this the PGD version, such as the Ericcson method and the MicroSort method. The oldest technique is the Ericcson method, which employs the idea that Y-carrying sperm are faster than X-carrying sperm. The Y-carrying sperm should reach the bottom of the test tube first and then can be separated and used for insemination. This is the lowest cost technique, but the chances of success are about 50/50 according to critics.
The MicroSort method sorts the sperm into “boy-producers” and “girl-producers” by staining the sperm’s chromosomes with a fluorescent dye. The dye in the X chromosome will glow brighter than the smaller Y-chromosome when examined with a laser. Electrodes then give the sperm different charges and as they pass by charged plates are separated into negative (y’s) and positive (x’s). However, this process of separation is not perfect. Since MicroSort's family-balance FDA trial began in 1995, more than 1,300 couples have signed on for the project. Out of those 1,300 couples, over 400 babies have been born with the parents’ preferred gender, out of the 750 that need to be produced for the method to be deemed successful. MicroSort will become the first sperm-sorting device to receive the FDA's stamp of approval for safety and effectiveness.
The difference between MicroSort and PGD is that in PGD, determination of the gender occurs after fertilization occurs in a petri dish. Then the embryo chromosomes are examined for an X or Y to determine gender before implantation in the mother. While this process is more invasive, costly, and the newest to the market, it also boasts the highest success rates. At first PGD was only offered to couples already going through fertility treatment, but now it is also being offered to otherwise healthy couples. Many hopeful parents have flocked towards this method once word got out, but some still opt for the more traditional Ericcson method.
We’ve all heard of the growing scientific advances in reproductive technology in the news throughout the years. First it was test-tube babies, then donor eggs and sperm, then surrogate mothers, etc. But with all of this new technology, these practices are swiftly becoming old news, and it seems that choosing the gender of a child is only the next step in reproductive research. With that in mind, maybe it shouldn’t cause more controversy than any of these other reproduction genetics developments. But where do we draw the line: eye color, hair color, height… intelligence? Is this a modern form of gender discrimination or eugenics? It’s no wonder why many countries have already declared gender selection illegal.
Natural gender selection is one of life’s processes, and until now, random-gender births have been the only option. However, people have been trying to manipulate random births throughout history. We’ve all heard of some countries’ desire for a population with more of one gender than the other, and when parents don’t provide that gender, babies are killed or thrown in the trash like garbage. With gender selection methods, these horrific and tragic events could be prevented. Imbalanced gender ratios in some countries, such as China, could even be balanced out through these new technologies. There is even a term for it in the field: “genetic balancing.” Science has given us the technology to determine the sex of future generations, and in this era, a time that depends, expects, and thrives on the promises of future technologies, is gender-selection really all that unethical?
