A clinical trial into the effects of allowing couples to choose the sex of their babies has been given the go-ahead at a United States fertility clinic. The controversial study was given the green light by an ethics committee after nine years of consultation. The purpose of the study is to find out how cultural notions, family values and gender issues feed into a couple’s desire to choose the gender of their child.
Fertility clinics already use a technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to select healthy embryos if a child has a high risk of inheriting a genetic disease, but the technique can also be used to select the sex of embryos for couples having IVF treatment. In many countries, including Britain, using PGD for family balancing is banned.
Fertility specialists at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas have already received 50 inquiries from couples about joining the trial, according to the journal Nature on Wednesday. Only couples who have already had one child and want another of the opposite sex are eligible. As well as assessing the factors that contribute to a couple’s decision to select the sex of their next baby, doctors will monitor the health of the children and any social issues that arise in their families as they grow up.
This year the House of Commons science and technology committee issued a report suggesting sex selection should be made available in Britain, but several members of the committee strongly disagreed and attacked the final report for being too liberal.
Francoise Shenfield, a member of the ethcis committee of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology at University College London Hospital, said selecting sex for social reasons should never be permitted.
”If you believe in equality as enshrined in international human rights, it’s illogical to allow social sex selection. It necessarily means that one sex is preferable to the other for that couple,” Shenfield said.
According to Paula Amato, one of the doctors running the trial, choosing sex to balance families is less ethically problematic.
”Most of the ethical arguments against sex selection, for example sex discrimination, are weakened when it is reserved only for the purposes of gender variety,” she said. – Guardian Unlimited Â