WUNRN
By Maureen Nandini Mitra - June
8, 2010
Arthur Yee wants a son. “It’s important. As the oldest son in my family, it’s
my duty to continue the bloodline,” says the
Yee comes from a traditional Chinese family that immigrated to the
Image by Flikr user Freeparking, illustration by Ian Ume
The couple has been trying to
have a baby for a while. They opted for in-vitro fertilization (IVF) after
Setzo suffered an ectopic pregnancy (where the embryo implants itself at a site
outside the uterus) and miscarried. During the IVF process, Yee consulted their
doctor about a procedure he had heard of called “pre-implantation genetic
diagnosis” (PGD) that allows parents to select the sex of their offspring even
before the embryo is implanted in the mother-to-be’s body. “They told me how
they do it – by DNA sampling of embryos. But when you puncture the embryo to
extract the fluid, you are actually endangering it. So I didn’t think it was
worth it,” he says. “In inexperienced hands you can end up damaging the embryo,
but in experienced hands our loss rates of these embryos is less than one-tenth
of one percent,” says Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg whose clinic, The Fertility
Institutes, labels itself as “a leader world center for 100% PGD gender
selection.” Yee and Setzo might have opted out, but hundreds of couples across
the
Initially developed to detect serious, often fatal, sex-related genetic disorders, the way these technologies are now used presents complex ethical challenges regarding gender discrimination, choice, and regulation.
Just an hour’s drive from Yee and Setzo’s home, The Fertility Institutes handles an average of 600 sex selection cases a year, half of them for international clients, usually from countries where embryo screening for gender and other non-medical reasons is banned. According to Steinberg, who’s been offering the service for fourteen years, business is booming.
Sperm sorting involves separating X-chromosome (female) sperm from
Y-chromosome (male) sperm, and then using either male- or female-producing
sperm to fertilize the ovum (female egg) through artificial insemination or
in-vitro fertilization in order to produce offspring of the desired sex. In the
In the PGD process, several eggs are extracted from the mother and fertilized in-vitro with the father’s sperm. After three days, when several eight-cell embryos develop, one cell is removed from each embryo through a tiny straw one-quarter the diameter of the human hair, and screened for desired gender and genetic diseases. Healthy embryos of the desired gender are then implanted in the mother’s womb. So far, despite the risks involved, PGD has proved more effective in sex selection than the 74 to 88 percent success rate of sperm sorting. But, this technique also has drawbacks. Each PGD attempt comes with the hefty price tag of $18,000-$27,000 and often requires several attempts. Furthermore, in-vitro fertilization exposes the mother to significant risks, including potentially life-threatening ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome (the excessive stimulation of the ovaries, a side effect of fertility medication) and multiple births.
Steinberg and other doctors offer these new sex selection techniques for what they call “family balancing” – helping a family with one or more child of one sex to conceive a child of the opposite sex. Human rights and women’s groups, however, accuse them of unabashedly promoting a practice viewed as an exercise of sexism at the most profound level – choosing who gets born. Biomedical ethicists and some doctors are critical of the practices because they believe it represents an early phase of eugenics, or genetic trait selection, and could lead to made-to-order babies. If it is okay to choose for sex, then how do you say it is not okay to choose for skin color or eye color or height?
One of the key critics of non-medical sex selection is Dr Mark
Hughes who actually helped pioneer the PGD procedure more than a decade ago.
Hughes believes doctors have “no business” helping families choose their
child’s sex. “Your gender is not a disease the last time I checked,” he said
during a television interview.
Any discourse on sex-selection has to take into account the
implications of “son preference,” that is common to most patriarchal societies
that value men over women. The prevalence of sex-selection practices in
But such a culture is not unique to
Several recent studies of the 2001 US census data (by Columbia University and the University of Texas, among others) have revealed that sex selection is affecting gender ratios among Asian American, African American, and Hispanic communities within the country. Clinics offering sex selection cash in on this bias through slick marketing campaigns often targeted at specific ethnic communities. Advertisements touting PGD and sperm sorting often appear in Chinese and Indian newspapers with large readership with headlines like “Desire a Son?” and “Do you want to choose the gender of your next baby?”
Interestingly, newsletters and online testimonials for these clinics
usually feature Caucasian couples who’ve chosen to have daughters. Yet doctors
like Steinberg openly admit that Asian couples form a large part of their
client base. “About 35-40 percent of our clients are from
One of the key questions regarding sex selective practices is
whether we should be regulating these technologies and if the government should
play a role in setting these boundaries. Jesudason thinks government regulation
could be one way to go, but it isn’t the best option. “If you have a regulation
banning sex selection in place but you haven’t changed the mindset of people
regarding gender equality, they will find ways to do it.
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